Stress points November 24, 2008

Funny how Mondays are basically Mondays, even if I don’t go to work. I work three days a week, and my schedule is pretty flexible. Usually I go to work on Tuesday and Thursday, plus either Monday or Wednesday, but it varies. This leaves me time to myself and, theoretically, time to write.

My day filled up today, but most of the time it filled with a sort of grace, like a barrel of rainwater that will slough thirst on a drier day. There were just a few moments that threatened to unhinge. I want to explore one of these stress points.

It happened at about 5:30. I had invited T., M., and 4-year old S., former housemates who just this weekend moved out of the collective that B. and I left seven months ago, for dinner. I had asked T. on the phone whether she had any requests. I thought that since she knows my cooking — we lived together in the collective for two years — she might wish for something in particular. She didn’t have a request, she said, but she had an anti-request: something just slightly more elaborate than a plain grain, plain veggie, and rather plain tofu or bean dish. It took me a little time this morning to figure out what that might be, but one of my Most Important Things for today was to find a recipe that inspired me, and I was successful: bhangra burritos (without the tortilla) from the Rebar cookbook. Anyhow, T. had said they would come at about 4:30 to hang out and help me with dinner. We would eat at 6. At 4:50, they hadn’t yet arrived, and I decided I’d better start cooking.

I had fun cooking at the start. Here I have to explain that I don’t generally enjoy cooking. Maybe this is related to my difficult relationship with food in general (see yesterday’s post), but most of the time I find cooking tedious and time-consuming and intellectually unstimulating. Perhaps I might want to consider the value of included intellectually unstimulating activities in my day (in contrast to the intellectually stimulating — overstimulating? — mind-number activities of interwebs surfing). Hmm. Anyhow, I started out dicing potatoes, which went faster than I anticipated. I made a puree of red peppers, tomatoes, garlic and ginger, which to my delight tasted somewhat like gazpacho. Makes sense, really, but I was surprised. I was making great time, no need to hurry. This is fun! I’m making stuff!

Then T., M. and S. arrived, at about 5:15. The air crackled with the static of relationships. Hugs and hellos, and S. wanted to show me her new violin. I was still cooking, cooking, as we chatted, three conversations at once. Then at 5:30 I remembered suddenly that I hadn’t put the rice on yet. I had wanted to prepare brown rice. Stress point. There wasn’t time to make brown rice. And I didn’t really have time to make rice; all of my concentration that wasn’t attending to the stove was being mopped up in conversation. I grabbed the white rice jar, threw the parts of the rice cooker together, and handed it all over to T. “Please make rice!” I instructed, and she did. But the rest of my cooking time I was on low simmer, not boiling over with stress but it was taught under my skin. Every move I made felt slightly harried, like the meal was wresting control from me: it was going to take it’s own damn time, thanks. No matter how much I wanted the dinner on the table on my timeline, the food was going to be ready when it was ready. At this point in the game, I couldn’t recalibrate the schedule, I couldn’t change the plan, I just had to play and see what happened.

And then I looked at the clock again, and it was 5:45. The main dish was done, the rice was well on its way. I had pre-chopped, pre-washed salad greens in the fridge; I put them in a wooden bowl. The stress melted off me. I had plenty of time, and if the rice wasn’t ready exactly at 6, well, it would be ready shortly after, and besides, that was totally out of my control, so why worry about it?

My relationship to stress isn’t straightforward. My grade 10 biology teacher — my favorite teacher ever — once exclaimed, “Yael, you are a bundle of nerves!” Really? A bundle of nerves? That’s not me. Passionate, yes. High strung, no. Then later, when I was approaching a tight deadline at work when I lived in Boston, a few years after college, a colleague burst out laughing when I said, suddenly, “Oh, I am so stressed!” “You are? You don’t even sound stressed when you say that!” I was surprised by both of these incidents because I realized people had impressions of me that didn’t accord with how I felt about myself.

I think these days I am more of a bundle of nerves that I have been at other times in my life. Maybe Mrs. B. was right; maybe she could see it even back then when I was 15. I am a sleeping tooth-gnasher and a headache sufferer. I have a chronic knot under one shoulder-wing, have had it for years now. I get intellectually paralyzed when I’m scared of a task and can spend hours mindlessly web-surfing (or playing sudoku — really, hours! — until I blocked the website where I played).

Today was relatively stress-free, and I think that’s what has helped me identify this stress point. Usually the stress in my day would ebb and flow throughout, as I tried working on overwhelming and time-sensitive tasks. It’s funny — my job is really not time-sensitive, except I make it so by procrastinating. This connects to the practice vs. project thinking that I wrote about yesterday: if I could sustain a practice orientation, more things would get done in a day-to-day flow. Tasks wouldn’t take on an all-or-nothing tint as I race against the clock to get them done in time.

I set three “Most Important Things” that I wanted to do today. They were pretty simple things, and I did them all. Morning exercises, looking up a recipe that inspired me (it was yummy!), and spending time on my writing. I wrote for quite a while, actually, using a new tool: Write or Die. You have to check it out. It’s a little punitive in approach, and sometimes I was irritated by the screen going from pale pink to red as it urged me to get writing again — I’m thinking! Let me think! — but it was tremendously successful at keeping me going to my writing goal. These three MITs were not overwhelming, especially given the roomy spacious day I had as their container. There were, of course, other things I had to do today as well. Grocery shopping, laundry, cook dinner, answer a few emails. So what? I did them. I got more done today than most days. I’m going to pick three more MITs for tomorrow. And watch for the stress points. If I can identify them as they are happening and take the time to breathe, I can probably prevent them from taking over my experience, from a stress point to a stress landslide. Instead, from a stress point to a blossoming.

Let’s see how tomorrow goes. I’m curious.

Projects vs. Practices: a post and a post-it November 24, 2008

I published this site many months ago, and yet I have not as yet posted a single item. So here it is, my first item.

I would like more of my days to be like today. First I shall describe the day, and then I shall abstract the elements that I’d like to experience with more frequency.

This morning I awoke into sunshine at 9am. B. woke alongside me, rolled over and asked if I wanted to go running with her. Here I have to explain that for about seven weeks now I’ve been attempting to follow a “Learn to Run 5k” program that has me running three days a week. The first few weeks I was puffed up and happy about my running. Two weeks ago I ran twice. Last week I ran once. I’m a solid week behind. Last night I asked B to force me to run this morning. So she rolled over and asked if I wanted to run. “It’s so beautiful out!” she said. And she was right, so we ran. It was a long run (for me): 5 min running, 1 min walking, repeat seven times. We ran to Trout Lake, and around the lake three times. This included many sightings of cute dogs.

Then we came home and made a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and cottage cheese. By then I was really hungry and the food was delicious. Here I have to explain that I have not experienced real hunger in weeks. I have been eating mostly cakes and treats and breads and cocoas, and have been eating them half-heartedly. They don’t even taste good to me anymore. But greens and fruits taste even less good. I’ve lost my relationship to food. It’s not you, food, it’s me. So, that said, it felt great to savour the eggs and toast and cottage cheese.

After a luscious hot shower I met up with a friend, S. We walked over to a local etsy crafts sale more or less in my neighborhood. I like looking at interesting handmade stuff. I didn’t find anything I wanted to buy; I just liked looking. After looking around there and at another crafts sale nearby that we just happened to stumble upon, we hopped on a bus and went back to S.’s neighborhood. I had a library book waiting for me to pick up — The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. I’ve read a few reviews of this book, and if a book is wildly popular in France but publishers wonder whether North American audiences will be turned off by its intellectualism, well, that is a book for me. Plus, how could I resist a book with the word “hedgehog” in the title? While we wandered the library I found Lonely Planet travel guides to Norway and England. We’re going to visit B.’s family in Norway in about a month, and on our way back home we’re stopping in London for five days. “This is great,” I thought. “We can actually make plans for our trips!”

Then I wandered down to Unity Yoga where B. was waiting for me. I went to my first yoga class in months. Here I have to explain that in August I did my own personal yoga marathon. I went to a yoga class every day for the whole month, except for two long weekends when we went out of town. All in all, I went to yoga 21 days in August. Since August I’ve been to one yoga class. B. doesn’t usually come with me to yoga, but she came this time, and it was lovely to have her contorting herself right next to my own contortions. It was a particularly peaceful and gentle yoga class. I feel supple, a bit like a balloon that’s been pulled and stretched, ready to be filled with air and ideas and everything else in the world. Before we left to walk home, we were invited to join the Buddhist meditation group that sits at 7 on Sundays in the yoga studio. “Yeah, I’d really like to bring meditation back into my life,” I thought, but we were hungry, and left.

On the way home from yoga, B. and I talked about finding strategies to bring a quick morning exercise routine into every day. 30 squats, 25 sit ups, 10 push ups. When we arrived home, we made dinner together: brown rice, salad, soft tofu and mushrooms in black bean sauce (from a jar), and sesame-ginger Chinese greens. I was hungry, again — twice in one day! — and the food was so tasty. And so simple and quick. I made hot cocoa afterwards for us, and talked on the phone with my friend T. She’s going to come over tomorrow for dinner.

Just before I brushed my teeth, I read my various and sundry blogs. There was an article on Zen Habits that really inspired me, and I’m not sure why, other than to say that my day primed me for inspiration. The post by Leo Babauta was about what he’s learned from his recent failures. They were more like everyday failures of habit and intention, like a failure to eat well, a failure to be patience, and so on. Procrastination — I know that one well. I read the post, and a bunch of thoughts that had been floating around me all day coalesced: I have so many things I would like to shift in my life.

All the big things feel like they’re in place. I like my home. I love my partner. We have fun together. We have created a beautiful space. I enjoy my work and feel that it is meaningful, and draws on my skills, my education, and my passion. I am making progress on my book and just finished a wonderful year-long creative writing program, through which I’ve made amazing friends and established a writing community. I’m finally feeling at home in Vancouver.

Some of the day-to-day practical things could be better. I would like reclaim an enjoyment of food, and at the same time, recalibrate my eating habits to healthy. I would like to write more consistently, rather than in agonized fits and spurts. And I’d like to write more poetry, and try my hand at fiction, as well as my non-fiction manuscript. I’d like to exercise more frequently, but more importantly, more regularly. Yoga and strength-building exercises as well as running. I would like to procrastinate less. In addition, reducing my internet/computer time would probably be the healthiest thing I could do, both physically (saving eyes, reducing headaches and stress on the arms and shoulders) and emotionally.

So, let me extract some principles from this very calm and pleasant day.

1. I feel good when I exercise. I’d like to not skip out on my running training. It would be great to have someone to help me stay really accountable, but I think that person really has to be me. I’d like to add the morning workouts, and B. and I are going to try to set up the yoga mat at the foot of our bed, put up a tracking chart, and do it every morning. And I’d like to go to yoga at least on Sundays, ideally another day a week. But even just Sundays would be a great addition to the week.

2. I think if I exercise more, I’ll be hungrier, like I was today. And when I’m genuinely hungry, I’m more likely to eat food that is nutritious.

3. Today I made time to cook meals at home, with B. Actually, she made me breakfast, which was lovely, and she’s wonderful in that she is happy to make food for us a lot of the time. And dinner, we cooked together. We pre-divided our cooking roles — a critical step for us if we’re going to have fun cooking together — and made a plan, then worked through it alongside each other. Too often I am inclined to eat out, which means I eat starchier and heavier meals, spend more money, and lose the opportunity to work together and spend time at home. Sometimes I feel like I would rather be out of the house than home, but I believe that might diminish if I actually invest myself more in domestic activities. There’s something frenetic about running around all the time. It might be nice to dial down that nervous energy that keeps me zipping around. Maybe I’ll even gnash my teeth less at night.

4. In the library, I looked at a book on headaches. S. pointed it out to me. I get headaches all too often. I wouldn’t have picked up a book on headaches without her prompting, but I did flip through it, and what I took away from it was: reduce stress. IE: exercise regularly, eat well, get enough sleep, breathe deeply every so often. Hmph.

5. One thing I loved about today was the balance of planned and spontaneous activity. Yesterday I decided to go to the craft sale and the library. I had halfway set an intention to run. Then this morning after the run, I added the plan to do yoga. That was it. The day filled slowly, gently, fruitfully. I spent time with my partner, with a friend, at home, out in the public sphere. Good balance. This evening I read an article on lifehacker about setting a few MITs (most important things) in a day. I think I might write just three MITs on a post-it note and stick it to my computer. I’ll try it for a few days, and see how it works. Tomorrow my MITs are: look up a recipe that inspires me to cook for dinner, write an email to someone who is helping my identify people to interview for my book, spend a bit of time with my writing, and prepare just a little for the seminar I’m leading on Tuesday. OK, those are four, and I just thought of another: do the morning exercises. Five. Oh, and do a load of laundry. I can see how this is difficult. And maybe those work-related items are too much to expect myself with only a few hours of work time available tomorrow. Revised: morning exercises, find a recipe that inspires, spend time on my writing. Those are the things that I would be most likely to put off, push til later, let fall off the agenda. But those are the things I’ll feel best if I do. Those are the things I will do.

Is it boring to read about someone’s personal productivity and life-enhancement efforts? Especially when they includes a blow-by-blow description of a day’s activities?

I don’t intend for this blog to be a diary. I don’t think I’ll outline every day for you to read, though in a sense I suppose that’s the same as an aggregated twitter feed for a day. But I don’t twitter, and even though I’ve been tempted to try it, I think it’s more important for me to work towards unchaining myself from the computer. And I don’t own a cell phone or crackberry. So I’m not going to add something to my life that will make me feel even more than I already do that I need to update my status every two hours.

I think this blog will be more about the little moments of my days, the random thoughts, inspiring thoughts, that I have. It will be somewhat focused, not on personal productivity, but rather on the process of establishing practices. This summer I hit upon a new concept: it isn’t so much about process vs. product orientation. It is, rather, about practice vs. project orientation. Most of my life I’ve been stockpiling carrots (metaphorically speaking) — the rewards for projects well done. I’ve become very, very good at projects. A+, A+. But life is not a project, and I am not a project. Life is an ongoing flow of experiences, and I’d simply like to develop the skills to create frames for my experiences. A bit of order in my life — not to constrain but to create space for creativity to flourish. And I believe that transforming my approach — a focus on practices rather than projects — will help me do this.

I’m going to write my MITs for tomorrow on a post-it note and go to bed with my new library book.