Taking stock of 2008, contemplating 2009 December 31, 2008

It’s New Years Eve today, and I’m just realizing that I haven’t yet taken stock of my year; all I’ve been doing is trying to ignore the little voice in my head that chirps, “Are you going to make any resolutions (and fail to keep them)?” Maybe taking stock of 2008 will empower me to look at 2009…

This year I actually reached some milestones, in terms of projects accomplished or well-begun (for my differentiation of project- and practice-orientation, see here):

• In my ‘day job’ — which is not just a day job, but a career path in educational development — I completed a two-year project pulling together a resource for higher education instructors to foster global citizenship in teaching and learning. I was the “editor,” which involved mentoring, delegating, writing, editing, and working through a publication process. I learned so much, and I’m pretty proud of the 100-page book we created.
• In the same job, I created a partnership with UNICEF Canada and thus ended a long hunt for funds to actually design and print the book.
• I completed the year-long creative writing program, The Writer’s Studio (I still need to take a few short courses to get the certificate).
• I found the voice of my book (potential titles: Homefront OR The War in the Nest) and have written four chapters.
• I am actually succeeding at finding ‘conservative’ families for my book! I interviewed two military families in December, and have one more in the wings, to be completed in January.

These all feel like major successes.

On the front of practices, I have also had a few successes:

• I designated August my yoga marathon month, and actually did practice yoga at my yoga studio every day that I was in town; I think that means 23 days — I knew but I no longer remember. The irony is that after August I went for at least two months without practicing yoga at all. And now I have gone back to yoga, though only to a sporadic once-a-week-or-so.
• I started a “Learn to Run 10k” running program in something like October, and it has been amazing. There were two weeks in a row in which I only did two of the three runs — my enthusiasm was flagging — but other than that I’ve been really committed. So far the longest run I’ve done is running 8 minutes, walking 1 minute, repeat 7 times. I should be in week 11, but I twisted my ankle — re-sprained an old injury — in the middle of a beautiful run through a forest (run 3 of week 10), so I have been set back. Still, I am going to wait out the injury this week and hopefully be ready to run again next week.
• Regular flossing! After spending the past 33 or so years as someone who flossed after eating corn on the cob and the night before going to the dentist, I actually developed a flossing habit! It wasn’t even difficult. What made the difference? I don’t know, maybe an increase in vanity? Encouragement from my dentist (yes, the one from the TV show!)? My partner’s enthusiasm at flossing (her own teeth, not mine)? Whatever it was, now I floss about 5-6 days a week.

I also made many, many attempts at establishing practices that didn’t stick, foremost in writing and healthy eating. I’m not terribly concerned about the writing practice at the moment, because I have still succeeded to write by establishing deadlines for myself — though the two weeks that I maintained a daily writing practice were incredible, and the pieces I worked on then were the keys that unlocked the book I’m writing, so there’s the advertisement for a daily writing practice.

Where I have really not managed to make a practice stick is in healthy eating, and it shows! I have gained over 30 pounds in 2008 — how is that even possible?! — through yo-yo eating habits, cycling through bouts of very healthy eating and bouts of sugar binges. I’m feeling a little helpless around establishing habits of eating that are good for me, even though it is actually quite simple, as Michael Pollan says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (and I’d add: Almost no refined sugars.)

I am of two minds when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions. I certainly have the ‘personal productivity’ impulses of making lists, setting goals, blah, blah. I am easily seduced by the idea of fresh starts, a clean slate of shiny new intentions. On the other hand, I feel burnt by failures to establish practices, and of course we all know that the vast majority of people do not keep their New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t like setting myself up for disappointment; who does?

Still, I’m intrigued by the idea of establishing new habits. I made two moves this week towards setting resolutions and establishing new habits.

I contacted Gretchen Rubin, who writes the blog The Happiness Project. Gretchen spent 2008 experimenting with happiness, following every guideline, suggestion, research finding that points towards increasing happiness, and she is writing a memoir about it. Gretchen also has a resolution chart, inspired by Ben Franklin, and she is willing to share her list if you email her; this is what I did. I was curious to see what her resolution chart looks like, and I was surprised to see a long long list of resolutions that change every month. Gretchen evaluates herself on all the resolutions every day, which also surprised me: those are a lot of things to try to work on daily, and many people writing about resolutions and self-control suggestion not making too many resolutions. Hmm. I haven’t emailed Gretchen back to ask about that, but I’m contemplating whether to make my own resolution chart. I think that if I were to work on healthy eating habits, I would have to break up my resolutions into really really small steps. For instance, if I wrote “Avoid sugar,” with the way things are going right now, I would have a really difficult time not having a string of sad-looking crosses representing my failure to avoid all sugar each day. Instead, I might have a resolution like, “Resist at least one sugary treat,” and that way if I succeeded once in the day at walking away from unhealthy food, I would succeed! The next month, I could step up to “Resist two sugary treats.” Hmm, I’m actually kind of excited by this idea. Maybe I’ll try it. Thanks, Gretchen!

The other approach I was interested in taking is Leo Babauta’s Power of Less. Leo writes the blogs Zen Habits and Write to Done, both of which I follow, and he has a new book out. He’s doing a bunch of things along with the release of his book, and one is the Power of Less New Year’s Challenge, which aims to help one create a new habit over the month of January. I was intending to do this, but I wonder whether the format really works for the habits I thought I would work on. The idea is to practice the habit for only 10 minutes each day, and then log about it in the forum. I had thought my new habits would be: eat sitting; eat slowly; eat three meals a day (no more, no less). None of those are only-10-minutes-a-day sorts of things. I suppose I could time myself for 10 minutes while eating slowly and intentionally, and then just let myself eat ‘normally’ the rest of the day. That might be the thing to do. I have some decisions to make in the next 24 hours!

Stay tuned; I will announce my resolutions (or lack thereof) in the next post.

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.