We talk ourselves out of making changes because we are pretty sure they aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. There is a certain pride to be found in taking a contrarian position. For instance, I think Pop Tarts are gross. I didn’t like The Fifth Element, and I wasn’t all that impressed by Firefly, either. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and quit reading. Obviously I have nothing else worthwhile to say! All I was going to talk about was that the insight almost always comes after the experience. We sit around waiting to “feel like” doing certain things, and guess what? We never “feel like it” because that isn’t how it works. What happens is that we try stuff, realize things about it that we wouldn’t have guessed, and then we see what all the fuss is about. Or not. I mean, Pop Tarts? Whatevs. My resistance to something is usually proportionate to how important that thing later becomes in my life. I used to openly mock runners who jogged in place at intersections. I used to go off on lengthy rants about how people on dating sites always talk about how much they love hiking, but I actually hated hiking and thought they were lying to make themselves look good. I used to talk about LA and how it was a cesspit that symbolized everything bad about humanity. Now I live in that region, which I find delightful, and running and backpacking are two of my favorite things. I used to loathe mornings and considered myself a total night owl. Now I wake up around 7 AM, even on weekends, and it’s one of my favorite times of day. Past Self would think we had completely lost our mind. Many of the positive changes in my life have come about completely by accident. Part of this is because historically I have moved a lot. The next time I move will be my 29th time since 1993. What happens is that all the patterns of my life get shaken up. How I arrange my house, where I buy groceries, what I do for exercise, how often I go to the library or park or movie theater, and how much I sleep have a surprising amount to do with where I am living at the time. (Upstairs Crackhead Neighbor from 2007, you suck. Get help). I’ve been able to look back at different times in my life and whatever random distribution of habits I was following, and spot patterns that were positive, negative, or turned out not to matter as much as I would have guessed. Of course, I can also compare my results to whatever results other people seem to be getting, but the only way I can get solid information about that is by asking. My assessment of other people’s motivations is probably about as poor as my assessment of my own. Working out is a great example of this. All my life, I thought athletes were dumb and mean. I thought going to the gym was for vain people who had nothing better to do. The first inclination I had that there might be more to it was when I bought a bike. My intention was to save money, because I am a tightwad, and perhaps do something positive for the environment as well. I was determined to get the best possible value out of this $400 retroactive pay increase I got at work. That meant I had to skip enough months of bus passes to at least amortize the $400 cost of the bike. I didn’t frame it as exercise. At first I really struggled. I had to push the bike up every hill, and at the top of the bridge I would have to catch my breath for nearly five minutes. But I am FREAKING STUBBORN, so I kept going. I started to notice that I was beating the bus home, and that added to my determination. Within a couple of months, not only was my route easy, but I started having actual fun. Riding my bike became one of my favorite activities, giving me emotions I didn’t know it was possible to feel. I didn’t really even notice what everyone else saw, which was that my body composition had dramatically changed, until one day I realized there was visible muscle definition in my quads. What’s this? Body pride? Then it turned out that my cheapskate bicycle commute may have saved my life. Like I said: unexpected side benefits. What are some other unexpected side benefits? Walking: I find a lot of money. I have a jar with all the money I’ve found since 2005, and it has nearly $40 in it, much of it from pennies. Twice, I’ve been first on the scene when someone had a stroke and collapsed in the street, and I was able to help. I see a lot of interesting stuff, much of which I photograph for later enjoyment. My feet are really tough, and I can walk, run, or hike for many miles without getting blisters, which is nice on vacation. Wearing a small clothing size: My clothes are tiny, which means fewer loads of laundry. I can pack a ridiculous amount of outfits into a suitcase that fits under a plane seat. In stores that carry my size, I’ve been more likely to find awesome stuff on the clearance rack. I can fit comfortably in the middle seat. A backpack with the same days’ worth of supplies weighs less. Getting married: My husband can pop my back. My wedding ring is like a magical force field that I can use to wave off unwanted male attention. I have someone to talk me out of buying clothes that don’t look good on me. There is someone to watch my stuff and hold our place in line. I only have to cook or wash dishes on alternate nights. He keeps me warm on cold nights, when I used to wear a hat, shawl, and knee socks to bed. Having a parrot: Someone always notices when you wear new earrings. Surprise cheek kissing, complete with smoochy sound effects. Instant accessory for pirate costume. Always prepared to entertain small children. Makes random fart sounds. Showering is no longer a mundane activity. Someone appreciates your singing, no matter what. I talk to Past Self a lot. I’m convinced by now that she can actually hear me, if I yell at the screen loud enough. “DON’T GO IN THERE, PAST SELF!” (Maybe if I throw popcorn at her…) The more important certain events are in our timeline, the more often I revisit those scenes, and the more often I reinforce those messages. What if that little voice called the conscience was really mostly just time-traveling reverberations from our know-it-all, hindsight-is-20/20 future selves? It makes me want to listen harder, to find out if I can hear Future Self checking in more often. I shout out to her, “FUTURE SELF, WAS THAT YOU? THIS CONNECTION ISN’T VERY GOOD. CALL ME BACK!” I want to be as good a listener as I wish Past Self would be. Because that girl? Can be a real imp sometimes. Hey, Past Self. You really need to stop doing that thing. No I don’t. I DO WHAT I WANT! No, seriously. Search your heart; you know it to be true. Shut up, Future Self. You think you know everything. I DO know everything. I can see your future! You need to listen to me. Live your own life, Future Self. Don’t you have some retirement plans to worry about or something? Um, since you mention it… I know you already know about the law of compounding. AAARGGGH! Go away. I’m trying to live in the now! All I’m saying is that you’re really going to wish you had paid attention, just a short time from now. Okay, okay. What do you want me to do? I want you to quit drinking soda, go on a budget, lose some weight, start tracking your sleep metrics, get rid of your storage unit, and don’t date anyone on this list. [starts unfurling list] Pffft! [hangs up] Hello? Hello?? [stares at Future Phone] The trouble with all the advice I want to give Past Self is that I know it all sounds incredibly boring to her. Everything I know to be a good idea is intrinsically unappealing. Go to bed at 11. Stop reading in bed. Keep a food log. Stop buying books and clearing out the thrift store every month. Follow a housework schedule. NO. THANKS. From my current vantage point, I know the value of getting enough sleep is about 100x more than Past Self would rate it. I know we’re not going to want to keep a single item out of all her thrift shop finds, or that storage unit. I know how many times even an extra $25 in the bank would have saved our poor-planning little butt. I definitely know all the people we shouldn’t have dated. Most of all, though, if I really had only one wish? I wish Past Self would quit that soda habit. The one thing she cared about the most, the thing she was always least willing to consider rationally. Her one true, true vice. (Other than interrupting people and never calling anyone). Fortunately, I was at least dimly aware of the existence of Future Self from around the age of 19. I read about her in a book. She was hiking a trail a ways ahead of me, and every so often I would be allowed a glimpse of her, smiling at me over her shoulder, just before she disappeared around a bend. Who was she? What did she do for a living? What was she reading? Was she married? Did she ever learn to make decent pancakes? In this way, we start to determine the simple, harmless things we can do to make our daily lives comfortable and interesting. Past Self did a number of nice things for me, here in the present day, and as she got older and more experienced, she did more. She got us our retirement fund and our college degree and our driver’s license (in that order). She taught us to make the pancakes. She wrote hundreds of pages in our journal, working out a few of her issues, so that we could move forward with less baggage. She flossed our teeth and kept up to date on our tetanus shots and our passport. I have to try to be grateful for the favors and forgive her for the f-ups. After all, I can read her mind, but she can’t really read mine. Talking to Past Self always helps when I want to get ready for a conversation with Future Self. I remind myself of all the times I acted against our self-interest. How many times I fought our intuition and ignored that inner voice. How many times I overindulged in short-term hedonism, like eating cake for breakfast, and regretted it later, usually only an hour later! How many things I refused to submit to scrutiny, clinging to the exact habits that were draining and dissolving our quality of life. It keeps me humble. It makes me more receptive. It turns out that Future Self is pretty smart. She’s never steered me wrong. When I catch up to her, I can see the notes she leaves me on the trail markers, with little smiley faces and cheery notes saying “Well done, Past Self. You finally paid attention.” I’m not losing weight anymore. Diet industry, die in a fire, and I don’t say that lightly. Of course, I don’t have any weight TO lose anymore. I used to be obese. Now I’m at the actuarially endorsed “healthy weight for my height.” My BMI is 21 and I’m at 22% body fat. I wear a size zero. I’m 40, but men turn their heads when I walk by in a bikini. I ran a marathon. I could probably run 5 miles barefoot right now if I wanted. I’m stronger and more physically fit than I was at 15 or 25. That’s important to me, because I spent so many years battling one chronic illness or another. In my life, excess body fat and physical pain go together, like a right hand and a left hand. I did not go on a brand-name diet. I did not try meal substitution shakes, bars, powders, pills, teas, juices, smoothies, coffee with butter, Paleo, gluten-free, cleanses, or whatever else the $20 billion diet industry is constantly trying to sell us. (Compare to $30 billion for the self-storage industry; this is why I talk about clutter more than I do about health and fitness). I did not eat extra protein or fewer carbohydrates or even track my macros. What I did do was to use a scale, a measuring tape, and the MyFitnessPal app. I followed the app’s recommended calorie intake and logged everything I ate for three months. Then I kept going, not because I needed to lose more weight, but because I wanted to track my micronutrient consumption. My food log could one day be a valuable source of information if I need medical attention for some complicated health problem. (Like my cancer scare or the time I got a bald patch). I learned how much, and what, I could eat to maintain my new physique. I did not lose the weight at the gym. I didn’t even GO to a gym, and I haven’t stepped foot in one in years. Over the past two decades, I have had several gym memberships, been an avid bicycle commuter, taken dance, yoga, self-defense, water aerobics, and other exercise classes several days a week, and trained for a marathon. (In between years-long periods of illness when I did nothing at all). Working out is great fun and it feels good, once you get through the first three awful weeks of pain and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Working out has about zero to do with weight loss. I gained 8 lbs while I trained for my marathon because I kept cramming my little chipmunk cheeks with cookies, trail mix, and stacks of waffles. Diet for short-term weight loss, work out for long-term maintenance and pleasure. I love my body, but I have a lot of anger about weight loss. It goes in two opposite directions. On the one hand, there’s the stupid diet industry that tricks people out of their money and makes them feel defeated, hopeless, and like they lack “willpower” or “motivation.” On the other hand, there are all the defensive fat people who can’t pass up an opportunity to naysay every person who tries to lose weight, fit-shame anyone who’s Not Fat Enough (an actual acronym some acquaintances use), and spend their time trying to debunk or discredit peer-reviewed clinical studies. From time to time, I am fit-shamed by someone who didn’t know me when I was fat. I explain that I used to be obese, that I had thyroid disease and a cancer scare and fibromyalgia and migraines and a parasomnia disorder (and I can keep going if you’re interested). “Oh,” they say. Nobody has ever apologized for the fit-shaming, for calling me a bitch or telling me to F off. I suppose it’s assumed that I understand, because “real” thin women deserve such treatment, and I was simply collateral damage. I’m also mad because the process is completely different for men than it is for women. My husband used to weigh 305 pounds, and he was still over 270 when we met. He taught me everything I know about weight loss. He taught me to track metrics, and he’s even helped me set up mathematical models to figure out patterns. We’ve lost 100 pounds between us, and most of it, we lost as colleagues, partners, and gym buddies. BUT. Every step of the way has been different. People constantly told me to “be careful.” Nobody said it to him. A shop clerk pantomimed vomiting, suggesting I must be bulimic to wear the size I do. “Um, I’m a marathoner,” I replied, horrified to my core. I tried to make myself vomit once, when I was 12 and accidentally ate a bug, but I couldn’t do it even then. I don’t hate my body. I’m also sane. Does anyone understand how rude it is to joke around or hint that someone is mentally ill? Men who decide to lose weight don’t get lectured by their friends about body image and anorexia and fashion and celebrity obsession. My man is “big.” He’s been a football player, a lumberjack, and a hockey player. He doesn’t get told to “be careful” – even when he’s sharpening a chainsaw or lighting stuff on fire. He’s strong enough to lose weight if he wants, to “train” – but women aren’t strong enough to be strong. I’m supposed to be passive, curvy, and feminine, not active, muscular, and sweaty. I’ve had a foot in both worlds. Incontrovertibly, being fit is better than being unfit. It’s useful and convenient and it’s far more physically comfortable. The comparison is precisely the same as having money vs. being poor and in debt. Why would anyone ever go back? At 22% body fat, why would I want to be 35% body fat again? It’s not something I would set about to do on purpose, in the same way that I would not set about accruing $20,000 of debt. Weight gain is basically something that “just happens,” and we accept it, in the same way that debt tends to “just happen.” The same way that health problems tend to “just happen.” The same way that clutter “just happens.” Fitness levels like mine don’t happen by accident. It’s intentional, the way I do most things in my life intentionally. We don’t know what we don’t know. I never knew I could be as strong as I am now. When I asked doctors what I could do differently, they replied, “I don’t know what to tell you.” There weren’t any athletes in my family. I didn’t really know any fit people. I assumed that the thin people I saw just came that way, in the same way that jays are blue and sparrows are brown. I shut down a few conversations over the years, suggesting that I try losing weight or going to the gym, because what I had been told about thyroid disease and fibromyalgia said that I couldn’t do either. I’ve heard other people say that it is “physically impossible” for them to lose weight, and in my mind, it wasn’t even a question. I just was the way I was. Past Self never would have believed a word I have to say about health, fitness, or weight loss. “Past Self, being fit feels like being a millionaire.” “F Off, Future Self.” This is what I think. I think it’s a thousand times easier to change your body than to change your body image. I think the sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction we often feel toward our bodies comes from a feeling of being physically off in some way. Maybe it’s being constantly sleep-deprived or dehydrated, having imbalanced gut flora, a micronutrient deficiency, overloading our organs with too much sugar, too many calories, too many food additives, straining joints from excess body weight, relying on pharmaceuticals to deal with the side effects of our biologically inappropriate diets. If a single one of those factors applies, why blame that off feeling on magazine photos? There is no way to objectively quantify how someone will feel when beholding a fashion model of any size or appearance. We can objectively quantify what we eat and analyze a wide range of health metrics with laboratory tests. Given our society’s mortality statistics and reliance on prescription drugs, anyone under 35 should take this under consideration. Anyone over 35 already knows that the older we get, the more we start to suffer the side effects of our lifestyle preferences. I stopped losing weight. I made a decision. “I tried being fat but I had to quit.” Nothing about being “curvy” worked for me. I chose a path, an uphill and muddy path. I shook off everything holding me back, from ignorant doctors to inherited family beliefs to expectations of appropriate female behavior to food preferences. I quit drinking soda and eating breakfast cereal. I paid attention to my habits and became more aware of my body. I quit planning my vacations around what restaurants to try. I quit insisting on ordering two appetizers and a dessert. Very little remains the same in what I eat, where I eat, how often I eat, or how much I eat. I divorced Past Self and Past Self’s destructive, short-sighted habits. I made a radical change. I decided that I wouldn’t be fat anymore, that I would be at least a little stronger every year. Two years in, I’ve maintained that. I only wish I’d known to try it sooner. I am hereby declaring the Monday after New Year’s Day to be PROJECT JUBILEE. A jubilee is a festival, but traditionally it referred to emancipation, forgiveness of debt, and pardoning of sin. We’re going to take this day and clear the decks of old projects. You are now free, officially FREE, from obligations that Past Self tried to assign to you. There are real obligations that should be upheld. We are obligated to respect other people’s boundaries, follow the law, care for our bodies and our personal surroundings, return books we’ve borrowed, and accept the consequences of our action and inaction. Universal laws apply to us. That being said, we tend to feel a lot of guilt, shame, defensiveness, and stuckness about our unfulfilled commitments, most of which are figments of our imagination. You never have to finish a book that bores you. You never have to “catch up” on reading old magazines. You never have to test every recipe you save. You never have to finish every craft project you start. You never have to repair anything you aren’t using. You never have to use all the materials you chose. You never have to make anything just because you chose the pattern. You can rip out yarn and use it for a different project, or give it away. You can THROW AWAY incomplete cross stitch projects – the materials are only a couple of dollars. You never have to make a quilt, crochet an afghan, or knit a sweater if you don’t want to. You don’t have to finish projects you chose for yourself. You also don’t have to do projects you promised you would make for anyone else, especially if they were planned as gifts. Nobody wants a gift that felt like a depressing burden to create. Nobody wants to feel tainted by the funk of procrastination. Nobody wants to be emotionally linked to guilty or pressured feelings. Do a favor for everyone involved, release yourself from the project, and just get together and do something fun with that person. You can explain the concept of the Project Jubilee. Or, of course you can skip that, because your chosen person may never have known that you obligated yourself to that project. Let it go. Maintain the relationship, talk, laugh, spend time together, and let the mythical handmade gift fade back into the ether. A couple of people have promised to make things for me that never materialized. I don’t mind. It’s true that I’d feel better off if I never heard about these plans. Then I’d never be the wiser. I’d never know what I was missing. If one of these kind folks did make something for me, while working in secret, I’d be elated! It would be a massive surprise. Promising a project in advance eliminates that potential for surprise. It also expands the risk of disappointment. Past Self had a lot of fantasies about Present Self. Past Self thought we’d like things we never really did wind up liking. Past Self was terrible at estimating how long things would take and how we would prefer to spend our time. Past Self always thought we would be more interested in anything boring, messy, or difficult. Past Self loved to dump the debt, cleanup, and healthier behaviors on us. We can forgive Past Self, move past it, and try to be kinder to Future Self. The illustration for this post – take a look at it. Cute, isn’t it? I inherited it from my Nana. In the same closet was about 80% of a child’s sweater in peach yarn. I was the only granddaughter, and I’m pretty sure that sweater was meant for Past Jessica 1979. Judging by the pattern on this tea towel (and its cultural insensitivity), it’s significantly older than that. Perhaps having five children and eight grandchildren had something to do with the small stash of unfinished projects. I don’t judge. If the tea towel had been finished and used, it would surely have been worn to a rag and thrown away by now. If the sweater had been finished, I would have worn it and outgrown it within a year. Finding those projects made me feel a strong family connection; what I really inherited was the desire to start making more things than I could finish. Or wanted to. How do we evaluate our incomplete projects? I once finished a knitted toy for a child who wasn’t even born until I’d already been stuck in the pattern for a few years. The child for whom it was originally intended had long outgrown it. I didn’t realize it would take weeks of work. I also knitted about half a sweater for myself before losing 25 pounds. That one I ripped. We can pause and ask: Would I have chosen to start this project from scratch today? Do I feel excited about working on it RIGHT NOW? Can I finish it by the end of the month? What is my track record of finishing projects? Would I be better off if I shifted my focus toward something else, like my finances, my health, or my living situation? I changed my relationship toward unfinished projects. I looked around and realized that my crafting was taking over my living space. I decided to quit starting new projects or buying new supplies, materials, books, or patterns until I was done with everything I had begun. It took 10 years. I wound up giving away all my knitting and crochet stuff. I gave away some cross stitch kits, still in the package. I let go of the fantasy that I would ever make the time to learn to weave or make lace. Instead, I reached my goal weight, ran a marathon, wrote some books, and learned to play the ukulele. I could get up and acquire everything I need to start a new project, today, because I still have all the skills. What I’ve done is to let go of the clutter, the guilt, the looming deadlines, and the shopping trips. I’ve gained peace of mind, extra closet space, and room in my life for fresh possibilities. I declared my own Project Jubilee, and now I pass it on to you. How does freedom taste? Doing a life review every year can be a delightful and revealing process. I started doing this in 1999, during my divorce, and I would say that my New Year’s review process is the single biggest factor in my ability to overcome problems in my life. It’s the driving force behind all my accomplishments. It’s also the main reason I ever do anything fun; I tend to be driven and hyper-focused, and I have to remind myself to fit in things like “listen to more music.” I want to share a list of highlights and neat things from my year. Then I’ll talk about my resolutions and how I did. Saw an orca family in the wild, complete with baby orca! Saw a mountain goat family in the wild, complete with kids, and one of them SQUEAKED! Saw my first pine squirrel and rough-skinned newt. Birds seen for the first time include the black skimmer, black-necked stilt, cinnamon teal, Forster’s tern, little blue heron, and reddish egret. Learned about virga and lenticular clouds. Did two backpacking trips totaling six days and four nights. (Goal: at least one trip). Learned to hang up and securely tie a bear bag. Carried my heaviest pack ever. Building my confidence and independence in managing gear. Went on three planned trips, to Victoria, BC, San Diego, and Las Vegas. Started this blog and posted over 700 pages, with more than 200 original illustrations and photographs. Maintained my schedule of publishing every business day. Surprised my parents by showing up unexpectedly at their 40th anniversary dinner, making my mom cry. Started my coaching business. Moved to a new house. Met and spoke with Gretchen Rubin and Robert Reich face to face. Completed an online course, The Science of Happiness. I highly recommend it! You can take it for free, self-paced, starting 1/5/16. Read 163 books, 70% nonfiction, 50,074 pages (averaging 307 per book). Listened to complete queue of 22 podcasts. My Resolutions: We started a new habit, Saturday Status Meeting, in which we meet for breakfast and go over our goals every week. This has been so awesome that it’s like Marriage 2.0. My husband blasted through all his goals for the year by the end of March. I wanted to get a guitar and learn to play as a 40th birthday gift to myself. I changed my mind about this a few months into the year, because I developed a problem with tennis elbow and I was in a lot of pain. That pain is still resolving many months later. I still want to learn to play guitar, and I probably will start within the next few years, whenever I can do it without a repetitive stress injury. Disappointing. My top financial goal was to pay off my student loan early. This did not happen. I paid $1182 toward it. What happened was that I did not publish the book I had planned. Apparently I have an emotional block about bringing in money, on top of my known issue with finishing projects. My real goal should have been to push through my monetizing block. I had a physical goal about healing the tendonitis in my ankle and learning what kind of exercises I could do to develop my body more symmetrically. I’ve made progress here. I learned a lot about physical therapy, yoga, the foam roller, and ice massage. I learned a few simple new exercises that have been really helpful. I was able to go on two backpacking trips in the fall, putting a lot of weight on that ankle with no problems. Just as I had started running again, a couple miles a week, I got blisters under my nails (from the hiking), and now I’m working on resolving that. I made a resolution to learn more about anatomy, and I guess I should have been more specific! I had a goal about working with my grandma on a family history project. That didn’t happen either. I am learning that making resolutions that involve another person’s participation rarely, if ever, works as planned. I had a goal of changing my relationship with books. I have definitely succeeded with this, although it was much harder and took much longer than I thought. My lifetime romance with the public library seems to be over. The last 3-4 times I went into a bookstore, including POWELL’S BOOKS, I came out empty-handed. I’m still working on reading through my personal collection, which represents maybe 10x more stored reading time than I had thought. I’ve become more interested in my own writing than that of others. I had a goal of reading and writing more poetry. I succeeded at this, and it was great! I read an average of a poem a day, some of which did nothing for me, some of which lit me up and took my breath away. In December, I discovered the poetry of Mary Oliver, and that alone made this resolution worthwhile. I wrote a few things of my own, mostly doggerel, and that was fun. I had three ‘stop’ resolutions, all of which I did. The first was to stop bringing home books until I had read everything I already have. I am proud to say that we moved with one fewer bookshelf (about 6’), I have no library books checked out, and I don’t even have a library card in our new city. The second ‘stop’ goal was to stop leaving tissues in my pockets. It seems that as soon as I brought my awareness to the constant problem of shredded tissues in the dryer, I was able to change my habits. The third ‘stop’ goal was to “stop sticking my oar in on no-hope conversations.” That has been huge. Of course it’s also resulted in my spending very little time on Facebook. I continued to maintain my new goal weight of “healthy weight for my height” according to Google, and now I’m closing in on two years as a size zero. I’ve figured out where I can buy clothes that fit. I’ve also continued to win the battle against night terrors and migraine. I DIDN’T HAVE A SINGLE MIGRAINE IN 2015! January 6 will mark TWO YEARS WITH NO NIGHT TERRORS! It has not escaped my notice that going two years with no migraines and two years with no night terrors both correlate perfectly with being at my goal weight and maintaining our decision to double (then double again) our cruciferous vegetable consumption. We had a three-year goal horizon for getting patio furniture (after we moved to a new place, which didn’t have a specific timeframe yet). This unexpectedly came about when we rented our new house, and it’s much nicer than the modest vision I had in mind. Overall, it was a hectic and sad year in many ways. The Grim Reaper has been hanging around and we’ve had a lot of depressing family news. For the first time, we traveled more than we wanted. We moved again, which was a good thing, but it came at a stressful time. I’ve had constant pain from one part of my body or another every day this year. Imagine being grateful that at least you still have all your toenails. On the other hand, our lives have improved. We love our new neighborhood. Our marriage is stronger. I started this blog, and somehow I seem to have reached a point at which someone in the world is reading it, somewhere, every hour of the day and night. I started my coaching business, and with it, a new income stream. I’ve reached a level of productivity and engagement with my work that I never knew was possible. We’ve been dealing with several very unfortunate things that can’t be controlled, but we’ve managed to shape our world in ways that were in our power to control. Tomorrow I’m posting about my New Year’s planning process. I’ll include the goals and resolutions I’ve chosen. My hope is that my idiosyncratic, sometimes silly and small-scale goals will make this kind of planning more interesting and lower-stakes for others. Time passing is marked in so many different ways. We remember major events based on their significance in our lives, and after a few years, we may have to rack our brains to figure out the date. My parents used to ask me how old I was, because my birth was one of their mileposts. We remember what car we were driving, whether we were still in school, who was born, who got married, who was still alive. For me, the main milepost is where I was living. This is the 28th house of my adult life. This time, the move closely corresponds with a new year, which is my other favorite time marker. It makes me think of everything that has changed in my life since the last time we moved. When we moved into our now-old house, we had had a challenging year. We were coming to roost after three moves in about seven months, with two job changes to boot. We thought we were going to have to move to Alabama, a place thousands of miles from friends and family, where we knew nobody whosoever, on two weeks’ notice. Somehow, miraculously, my husband secured a better job here in Southern California instead. Our heads were still spinning, and I still had my Alabama road trip spreadsheet on my home screen. My stepdaughter had just started her first semester of college, and we were living as empty nesters for the first time in our marriage. We rented the house at the last minute, signing the papers electronically in the car on the way back to our old-old house. Neither of us had ever lived in such a tight rental market before, and we were bewildered by the way that every house we saw for rent was unavailable later the same day the listing was posted. The pace of life had changed in the same way as the speed of freeway traffic. When we moved in, we had four things on our minds, aside from the matter of our kid’s fresh independence weighing on our hearts.
Losing the extra weight took a bit longer. I had put on 17 pounds in 2013, and my health was in a tailspin. I wasn’t sleeping, I was getting migraines on a weekly basis, and I was having fibromyalgia flare-ups for the first time in over a decade. The stress had caught up to me. I already knew quite well that all my various health issues correlate perfectly with weight gain, and there was nothing in the extra visceral fat that was pleasing or helpful to my life. I could only really fit in two pairs of pants and three shirts, and we couldn’t exactly afford to buy me an entire new wardrobe. I started running again: 38 miles per pound burned. Then I started keeping a food log, and I decided to make “healthy weight for my height” my goal weight. I went on a strict diet for three months. That changed my life. For most of the 2 years since we moved to that house, I have stayed in the 120-125 pound range (I’m 5’4”). I also trained for, and ran, my first marathon. Oh, and I did wind up with a whole new wardrobe, just two sizes smaller instead of two sizes larger. We came to SoCal in a state of chaos. Our family life had been sundered, we were broke, our truck was on its last legs, our dog seemed to be dying, the movers broke some of our stuff, and we were moving into a dumpy little place down the street from a smoke shop, a massage parlor, and a Popeye’s Chicken franchise. Two years later, everything is different. The new vet put our dog on a new medication regimen for his Addison’s disease, and he’s so frisky at 7 that nobody would ever guess he is ill. I have transformed from an overweight, ill, headachy person to a lean marathoner. My husband got promoted into management. I started my coaching business. Our kid has been getting straight A’s. The old truck died with over 200,000 miles on it, and we replaced it with (don’t laugh) a VW Jetta, just in time for the emissions scandal. Moving again is exciting. I can only wonder what will happen in our lives in the next two years, or rather, what we will make happen. Last time, we felt that we were at the mercy of fate. This time, we are moving under our own power, a steamship instead of a storm-tossed sailboat. We are “done” with many of the crises that distracted us last time. “Done” with the health problems and the weight gain. “Done” with the high-maintenance old vehicle. “Done” with parenting; she’s 21, independent, and thriving. “Done” with downsizing and streamlining our stuff. The new house was just remodeled and meticulously detailed by our landlord. There’s nothing for us to fix. In the New Year, in this new home, all there is for us to do is to live and to grow into a bigger life. I woke up in Past Self’s bed, wearing Past Self’s nightgown. I took a shower and used her soap and shampoo and even her razor. I know she won’t mind; she’s Past Self and she won’t be needing it anymore. The trouble with Past Self is that when she moved out, she left all her junk behind. My closet is full of her clothes, my shelves are full of her books, and my fridge is full of her leftovers. What. A. Slob. Past Self, I’m so tired of cleaning up after you all the time. Past Self isn’t completely selfish, though. In fact, her rationale for most of the clutter she brought home was that she thought I would want it. Apparently she thought a bunch of crumpled receipts were my thing. Judging by my bookshelves, she also had some pretty misguided ideas about what I would want to read. She made all these queues and playlists for me, not just of books but of movies and music and articles and YouTube videos. It’s like, doesn’t she have anything better to do? Why does she have to keep trying to decide what I do in my spare time? At least she finally quit buying me craft supplies, like I was really going to want her to plan my next 10-15 years’ worth of leisure time. You don’t own me, Past Self! What a control freak. I’m in this limbo period right now. I’ve finally managed to wind down my compulsive media acquisition, so I can work through the backlog, either reading/listening to items or editing them out of the list. I’m trying to develop a sense of how many books, articles, podcasts, etc. I can process in a day and in a week. I want to be current. I want to let go of any attachment to the idea that I will “catch up” with items that may date back to 2007. Similarly, I am working on a vision of how Future Self is going to live, and what her material surroundings will look like. See, the thing about Future Self is that she is going to wake up in my bed one day. She’ll have to deal with the ramifications of my choices, for good or ill. I can leave her stacks of bills, piles of dirty laundry, and boxes full of clutter. I can also choose to treat her to something nice. I could get her a bouquet for tomorrow. I could send her money. I could surprise her with her dream home one day. All I have to do is to figure out how she would want it decorated. What kind of stuff will Future Self have? What is she going to want? If we started with a clean slate, how much of my stuff and Past Self’s stuff would she wish she had? Unless she goes to live full-time at a luxury resort, I can assume she’ll want furniture and dishes and laundry detergent and all the dozens of other basic household items. Those are things she can get anywhere. It’s the personalized stuff that’s under scrutiny. How many hard copies of photographs and documents and academic papers will she want? How many ornaments and decorations and bits of bric-a-brac? Is she really going to want to re-read everything I think she will? Is she still going to like the same music as me? Is she going to fit in my hand-me-down clothes, and will they still be in style? I know I’ve had to have these same conversations with Past Self, because she kept buying me clothes that turned out to be four sizes too big. She also left me a lot of boxes of random stuff. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, Past Self, I just wish you’d saved your money and sent me on a Parisian vacation instead. When I picture Future Self, I like to think of her having more freedom and more options than I do now. I like to think she’ll be able to travel more than I do. I like to think that her house looks intentional, that she has some kind of readily apparent design sensibility on display. I like to think that she’s fit and stylish and that she has better hair than I do. When I think of the technology that will be available to her, I quiver a little. She’ll be reading books my favorite authors haven’t even written yet and listening to music that doesn’t exist. GPS will be better, search engines will be better, and there will be hundreds of incremental improvements and innovations I can’t even imagine, but she’ll be able to take them for granted. If I saw her phone right now, I’d probably cry. In my lifetime so far, I’ve seen a lot of things become obsolete and fall by the wayside. For example, I used to have a push-button phone that picked up AM radio in the background, but only on my end. It had a three-foot cord. I’ve also spent countless hours in thrift stores that are chock-full of fugly castoffs, like an “Aisle” of Misfit Toys, but for clothes and lamps and plates. It makes me skeptical about material objects. They seem so desirable, until the zeitgeist blows by and they start looking shabby and lame in comparison. When Past Self and Future Self are separated by more than five years, it’s safe to assume that Future Self is not going to feel aesthetic delight in Past Self’s tacky, shopworn choices. Future Self may be traveling the world, living out of a suitcase, and not interested in most physical possessions of any kind. This is one of the great questions that divides my people from ordinary folk. Believe it or not, there are people who go through life utterly unconcerned about their physical possessions. They have what they need, they can find it when they want it, and they get rid of things that have outlived their usefulness without a second glance. The general belief of such folk is that if it’s in a box, it’s not getting used; therefore, you can just… throw it away. I know, right? Crazy. Boxes, according to this theory, are for very specific uses. They are required for shipping most things by most methods. They make it easier to carry stuff. They can be used to group like things together, making them easier to find. They are essential when moving to a new home. They can be used to store things that are used infrequently, such as holiday decorations. They occasionally add marginal resale value to collectibles or electronics. Cats like them. Other than that, why put something in a box? What is most interesting about this is that my people always have boxes, but somehow manage not to use them for many of the purposes that an ordinary person would. My people are not ordinary; they are extraordinary. They are creative, sensitive, divergent thinkers, better suited to coming up with 1000 uses for a brick than to following a numbered list of instructions. Amalgamations of loose items intrigue and inspire them. That’s why their cars tend to be full of random stuff, and their dining tables tend to be covered by random stuff, and their countertops tend to be buried in random stuff, and their closets tend to be full to bursting with random stuff… It’s basically an allotment of art supplies. When my people get ahold of a box, it quickly gets filled, as it’s the most expedient way to clear space to fill up with more awesome (read: more recent) things. As often as not, the box has been filled by someone else, probably during a hurried, disorganized move. This box probably has lots of friends. None of them are labeled, because what are we, fascists? In fact, my people are notorious for referring to organized people as Nazis, which is heartless and rude and also a cliché, but it does tell you something about their level of frustration with life’s many convergent, left-brain rules. One of those rules is the universal law that disorganized things in unlabeled boxes are hard to find later. Another reason my people keep things in boxes is that the very thought of opening the box and sorting its contents fills them with waves of nameless dread. They can’t bear the tension and stress and anxiety of being faced with all those decisions. Do I need it? Do I already have another one? Am I violating a moral precept by throwing it in the landfill? (We forget that we turn our own dwellings into de facto landfills…) Is it moldy or broken or disintegrating, and can I stand the pain of knowing it’s wasted and ruined now? So much better to close the box again and put it back. As long as that box is sitting there in its familiar, unopened state, its contents revert to the Platonic ideal, extremely valuable, easily convertible to piles of hard cash, perfect and stylish and gleaming. That box holds POTENTIAL. Boxes of misc (pronounced ‘misk’) are like the Sphinx’s last riddle. You could earn a doctorate by analyzing the contents of a box of misc and figuring out what to do with it. It never fails. When I come in to work in a client’s home, there will be a box that is 80% one type of object, which should be fairly straightforward. Ah, but it will also contain: a coin, an office supply, a piece of hardware, a button, some dry pens, and some junk mail. These have been random loose items that were tossed into the nearest open box during a cleaning spree or moving extravaganza. The presence of these miscellaneous items can turn a box of clothes, books, or kitchen supplies into THE DREADED MISC. Panic-inducing, mind-boggling, willpower-depleting MISC. It’s a form of invisible packing material that is made by Dementors in a dreary factory in Northumberland. Then I come along and wave my magic wand. Put the pennies in a jar, throw the rusty paperclips in the recycle bin, open the six-year-old junk mail and dispose of it. Hey presto! The box of misc (THE DREADED MISC) has transmogrified into common, everyday objects! Astounding. Another type of box that confounds my people is the box of dead relatives’ personal belongings. That stuff has a half-life. It’s absolutely standard to see hair brushes with hair still in them several years after their owners pass away from this world. Opening what is most likely a box of old pots and pans or mass-market paperbacks from the 80s is like defusing a bomb. An aura of grief pours out twelve feet in every direction. I’ve never been called on to help go through grief boxes. Generally I assume at least a decade has to go by before anyone is prepared to deal with the sadness of them. It’s yet another example of how we always isolate ourselves just when we need help the most. Don’t face it alone! Why is it in a box? Because someone else put it there. Because there’s nowhere for me to spread out the contents for sorting. Because I might be moving again soon. Because I’m actually a neat freak and it’s tidier to keep it all in my storage unit. Because I know exactly what’s in there, and I’m extremely emotionally attached to it, even though I don’t use it or look at it. Because I’m afraid it will get wrecked if I take it out to display it. Because I’m waiting for it to be worth something so I can recoup what I spent on it. Because it stacks better. Because I spend my money on things other than end tables and nightstands. Because I don’t want to set aside the time to deal with it. Because I’m afraid there might be a spider in there. Because it’s dusty and moving it will aggravate my respiratory issues. (As if the dust isn’t already doing that). Because it’s heavy and I’m physically unable to move it. (A great reason not to have it). Because the thought of getting rid of anything in the box is heartbreaking. Because I can’t think straight right now. Because I’m tired. Because I’m waiting for the motivation. Because I’m used to it. Because I don’t know how to proceed. Because I believe I can stop the passage of time by living in a static environment. Going through boxes is a way of getting caught up to the present moment. At some point, Past Self made a little time capsule, preserving things that Future Self may find cool or interesting or useful. Present Self probably has a better idea of what Future Self is going to want; after all, Present Self may be living further down the timeline than Past Self imagined in the first place. I still have books that Past Self 2007 thought Past Self 2008 would have read by now. It’s nice to think of Past Self sending us gifts. Charitable, anyway. What is more likely is that Past Self had a warped view of how we spend our time, what we think is truly important, and how much we enjoy cleaning up Past Self’s messes and paying Past Self’s debts. We can pause to reevaluate. It’s no trickier than readjusting your seat and mirrors after someone else drives your car. Stop and look in those boxes. Exorcise your misc (THE DREADED MISC). If it’s stuff you love, take it out and display it. Otherwise, feel free to let it go and look to the future instead of the past. I’m reviewing Janice Kaplan’s terrific book now, so that everyone has time to pick up a copy in time for November. The practice of sharing gratitude every day for a month is one I hope spreads much farther. It always cheers me up to see lists of things that make other people feel grateful. Either I think, “Me too!” or “Aww, good for you.” I’m grateful you’re grateful! Of course, not everyone is naturally optimistic, positive, or grateful, and this book is aimed at those who tend to be more skeptical. Kaplan commits to spend a year writing down three things that make her feel grateful/glad/lucky every day. Along the way, she interviews various people about gratitude, and explores how it affects our health, careers, romantic lives, relationships with our kids and other family members, and more. I wasn’t aware of much of the research that is discussed, and it impressed me. I often want to stop conversations with pessimists and direct them to come back after they have read a few key studies from the field of positive psychology. “It’s SCIENCE! Science, I say!” Burning old journals is something that comes up early in the book. I sat up in my chair as I read this scene, because I did the same thing several years ago. We had the same reasons. We both used our journals to vent negativity. It wasn’t so much that I believed in venting back then; it just seemed to happen and I didn’t have any better ideas. I felt that my life was negative. What on earth did I have to be grateful for? Oh, Past Self. You didn’t realize. In the past twenty years, so many people have passed from this earth, and instead of “venting” you could have been on the phone with each of them, enjoying their presence while they were still here. Even when there doesn’t seem to be a single other thing to appreciate, at least we can appreciate that people we love are alive and doing well. Kaplan’s gratitude practice is something I can vouch truly works, because I’ve done it, too. Looking for excuses to be grateful causes us to be more aware and mindful, and to notice more and more. Another interesting section of The Gratitude Diaries has to do with Kaplan’s desire to lose ten pounds. She meets with a trainer who teaches her to be grateful to her body, and to be grateful while she eats. I really like this approach, which I think comes more naturally to people like myself who have overcome illness. How can I not be grateful every morning when I wake up and I’m not in pain? Every now and then I stop and look at my fingers, and I imagine missing just a section of just one, and suddenly my fingers seem like the most amazing, beautiful things in creation. I feel like it’s my duty to go out of my way to appreciate them, because anyone who doesn’t have nice fingers like mine would think what an ingrate I was to take them for granted. It’s the same with other gifts, really. Sometimes I think of all the people in prison who would give anything to change places with me for a day, just so they could choose what to eat for lunch. All the people in the hospital who would be delighted to be able to do my workout for the day. All the hungry people of the world who would do any amount of cooking and dishwashing to be able to eat what I’m eating. Usually, though, I just do the obvious. I sit at the table to eat my meals, I take the time to plan and cook my favorite things, and I pause to think, “That was good.” I’m talking about myself so that I don’t give too many spoilers to The Gratitude Diaries. It’s structured around the calendar year that Kaplan does her project, so it’s the sort of book you can dip into a chapter at a time. That’s probably the best way to read it. It helps to keep focus on the topic, and take plenty of time to absorb the material and reflect on it. Gratitude is like a magic spell that can transform an unsatisfying life into a terrific one. It’s like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when everything switches from sepia to Technicolor. It does take practice, though. I can attest to the fact that it’s worth it. Sweat is dripping out of my hair. I’m hidden from prying eyes in the back bedroom of a ranch house that has seen better days. Now would not be a good time to call. You see, I’ve just performed an exorcism. On myself. On my treadmill. There are various moods that take hold of me from time to time. Some of them are mildly amusing, such as when I talk to myself in research mode or start singing mock opera lyrics when I’m trying to resolve an argument. “What… does it mean to youuuu… when my mouth is moving and sounds are coming oouuuutttt?” Most of my moods are disagreeable, to others, but also to me. I don’t want to hang out with myself. One of these moods is “the snit.” This is when I feel irritable, like there is a stress hormone saturating my body. (This is probably true, and it’s probably cortisol). The snit is nobody’s fault, but if I don’t steer clear of other humans, some of it may splatter on them like hot grease. Another disagreeable mood is the way I feel on a cloudy day, when I’ve burned through too much unstructured time and started to feel listless and bored. Too much sitting tends to make me headachy, and thus, grouchy. One of the biggest surprises of my life was learning that exercise is a reliable mood elevator. It always works. It works in the rain, it works when I’m sleep deprived, and it’s even worked when I started out with a headache. I have gone to the gym so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other, and emerged after a full cardio workout feeling like a million bucks. When I work out strenuously several days a week, my resting mood is about a 9 out of 10. This is why cranky people hate athletes. We’re so cheerful you want to kill us all. It’s like we’re having better sex (true) or enjoying how we look in workout clothes (probably false) or like being fit actually feels that much better (true). The trouble is that it’s easy to adjust to this super-excellent feeling. Then, if anything happens and you can’t work out for a few weeks or months, you start reverting to your baseline mood. It’s like the last third of Flowers for Algernon. Experiencing this spectrum of baseline moods is a sort of metaphysical puzzle. Which of these is the real me? Is it true what they say, that the runner’s high is just like any other drug? (One of the most absurd fallacies ever). In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that I know which behavior packages result in which states of being. If I can choose between chronic pain and fatigue with misery, acceptance with fortitude, or happiness with enthusiasm, then I can make an informed choice. I can realize that it is a choice, that I have a choice. I didn’t consciously choose chronic pain or illness, but I do choose when I am blissed out. I don’t enjoy being in a snit. I don’t enjoy feeling crabby or cranky or irritable. I don’t enjoy that restless, mopey, cabin-fever feeling. I lived alone for years, and I didn’t enjoy those feelings when I was by myself. Now I’m married, and I have to multiply my emotional environment by someone else’s. A snit is no longer just a snit; it’s a 2x snit, or more if we have guests. Negative moods become more costly, to myself and to others. I’d rather not… inflict myself on other people. The prospect is even more unnerving when I consider that other people are just as entitled to their own snits as I am to mine. It becomes a scenario of exponential growth. “Normal me” has a baseline mood of about 7 out of 10, while Workout Me hits a 9. Past Self of the fibromyalgia, four-day migraines, and thyroid disease lived at around a 4. At that time, I thought perky people were dumb and annoying. Honestly, I feel like becoming an athlete has made me smarter. I sleep better, and it may be nothing more than that. I can definitely attest to improved concentration sustained over longer periods. I’m better organized and more productive, measured by projects completed. I’ve become someone whom my own Past Self would totally hate. All I can do is look back at her and ask, “So, how’s that working out for you?” I’ve exorcised that dissatisfied, jealous, irritable, sarcastic version of myself, jettisoned in the same way I’ve eliminated my credit debt and cleared my clutter. I have everything she ever wanted, which of course is why I would annoy her so much. The best thing about a treadmill exorcism is that it only takes 30 minutes. Walk in feeling bad, walk out feeling fantastic! The endorphins are great and the natural analgesic effect is even better. The time and effort involved are pretty minimal. I went to the garage and cut out a board to put across the arms, so I can prop up a book or my laptop. Sometimes I watch true crime shows or skim Facebook. Usually I read a library book. In other words, I do exactly the same things I would have been doing if I were lounging around on the couch. The only discernible difference to me is that doing the treadmill barefoot makes your feet all black, so I have to wear shoes. Better to tie on my shoes, though, than to be in such a snit that I want to throw them at someone. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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