Weekly Roundup 25: Mid

You cool kids already know this, but "mid" is a slang term that means mediocre, of low quality, inferior, boring. We've reached the midpoint of 2024, and if the first half of the year felt mid, the internet is full of suggestions for a mid-year reset.

If you have a chunk of time and really want to be intentional about the process, this post from Living In Her Moment has a 12-step life-audit plan. Be prepared to spend some quality time with your journal, evaluate your habits and routines, and tidy up your space.

10 Questions to Ask Yourself for a Mid-Year Reset will also get you thinking about where you've been and where you're going. I particularly like "What is the best thing that has happened to me in each month of this year so far?"

If double-digit tips feel overwhelming, 3 Techniques to Regain Motivation and Move Forward is short and sweet but no less helpful. It addresses some of the science behind our often contradictory behavior around setting goals and taking action.

The internet being what it is, there are thousands of books, articles, podcasts, and videos addressing this particular time of year when we might feel at once stuck and re-energized. I had to be careful not to fall down that rabbit hole, because I might not resurface for a week. (It's kind of funny how reading about productivity feels productive in a way.)

I sometimes get frustrated and ask myself how many times I'm going to hit the reset button. I guess the answer is "as many times as it takes."

Welcome to July! I hope the month is fruitful for you!

 

Fourth Quarter Game Plan

Hi everyone, here we are in the fourth quarter of 2022, and much like a football coach who is trying to sneak in a win before time expires, I'm looking at my game plan for the rest of the year.

My writer word for 2022 is grow, and I've done some of that. I've also spent a lot of time feeling like a seed, waiting. And waiting. But unlike me, a seed doesn't worry how long it will take to sprout. If the conditions are not right, a seed is perfectly content to remain dormant. Likewise, a seed does not worry about what it will look like when it sprouts. It just does its thing.

Methinks I need to be more like a seed.

So, back to my fourth quarter game plan. Coaches talk about returning to the fundamentals, and that's what I'll be doing for the rest of the year. I'm going to focus on what's important to me (more writing, more reading) and less on the stuff that takes up time and energy but results in very little forward progress. Clock management is very important in football, and as it turns out, it is important in life, too. 

Whether you're driving hard for the goal line or just trying to hold onto your lead, I wish you all the best with your fourth quarter game plan.

And when all else fails, bring in the marching band!

Germination

When I was a kid, we had a few Chinese/Japanese lantern bushes lining the path along the side of the house. I loved how the puffy green seed pods turned orange in the fall and looked like glowing lanterns. Every few years, I think about getting one of these plants for my current house, but I can never find one in a local greenhouse. 

Lacking an established plant, I've tried starting them from seed. Usually, I can get most any variety of seed to sprout. It might not do too much after that, but I've at least seen it poke out its tiny green head. But these lantern seeds are stub-born. I've tried them in the ground, in pots, in wet paper towels, and...nothing. (I'm beginning to understand why greenhouses don't carry them.)

Because 2022 is my year to grow, I'm trying again. I found new instructions that suggested refrigerating the seeds for 6 weeks. I did that, and on January 1st I planted them in a little pot. Here's what it looks like:

Not very inspiring! But it reminds me that before growth happens, germination must occur. And that part of the process can require patience and persistence. Sometimes, we have to start over and over again before we make any progress at all. And that's just the way things are, in seeds, in writing, in life.

Send my seeds some good growing vibes, and hopefully I'll have some sprout pictures to share one of these days!

    

August Good Things

Hi, everyone! It's the last day of August, which always feels like the end of summer. I haven't blogged much lately, for a variety of reasons. But all is well, and I'll share a few things I've enjoyed this month:

Seeing live baseball for the first time in two years!

This beautiful rainbow, which was even more beautiful in person.

My sister was here for two weeks, and we had a few adventures.

More sister fun...using homegrown and farmer's market veggies for this delicious (but rather labor intensive) ratatouille.

Participating in a local tradition with my younger son. Colorado State University used to be Colorado A & M, and the A on the hill has been painted annually for nearly 100 years. Here are the photos before and after the first shift. Go Rams!

A private party/concert with The Motones, a Motown tribute band. Fantastic music and a great time.

I'm so grateful to have had these outdoor experiences this summer. Our Covid numbers are climbing steadily, and I'm afraid we will soon be facing increased restrictions even for fully vaccinated folks like me. 

I hope you are happy and well and ready for September!

Roadblock Season

Every spring, when we're (mostly) done with snowy weather, road construction season begins. Orange traffic cones pop up as prolifically as dandelions. Unexpected road closures and detours make getting from point A to point B a little more challenging. 

This is customary and expected, and it doesn't stress me out too much, unless I'm running late. My real problem this year is that the biggest roadblock in my life right now is...

Me.

Yep, I'm standing in my own way, impeding my progress as effectively as any "road closed" sign. Have you ever driven by a highway construction zone, creeping along behind a giant RV from Oklahoma for miles and miles, and it doesn't even appear that there's any actual road work being done?

That's my writing life right now!

To stretch this road metaphor, I've found myself at the intersection of discipline and passive resistance. Every time discipline gives that polite "go ahead" wave, resistance says, "no you first, I have (insert nonessential task here) to do." And on it goes.

I have things I need to do. Thing I want to do. I'm just not doing them.

Partly, I blame the enticing spring weather, which is a most welcome relief from pandemic winter. Growing season in Colorado is fairly short, and I have been working on getting flowers and veggies planted. But most of the blame rests squarely on my not-yet-sunburned shoulders.

Time for me to dust off 2021's word of the year again. The good news is that just as every ending can inspire a new beginning, every stop can inspire a fresh start.

How's your productivity these days? Are you running into any roadblocks?

Ready to Spring

via GIPHY

Happy Friday! I had planned to write a different (i.e. better) post for today, but after switching to Daylight Savings Time last weekend during a snowstorm that dropped 30" at my house, I haven't had the most productive or inspiring week. 

Walter in his little "snow-asis"

Tomorrow, however, marks the spring/vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere, which is welcome news. Every year, spring brings the promise of renewal, but perhaps no year more than this one. Longer days, warmer temperatures, and increased vaccination will hopefully spread a little optimism after a long and bleak Covid winter. 

With not quite two weeks left in March, there's time to wrap up the first quarter of 2021 and plan for the second. Though I'm still trying to factor discipline into my daily life, I can feel some of my new year enthusiasm waning, so it's a good time for a bit of a reboot.

For a list of  9 ways to celebrate the spring equinox, including the Descent of Kukulkan shown below, check out this list from Mental Floss.

It's Not All Phone and Games

I've always been a little smug about the fact that I'm not the kind of person who can sit around and play video games for an hour. But I apparently have become the kind of person who can sit around and play games for an hour on her phone--in twelve minute increments. I'm kidding myself with that work-around. The rules of time are pretty unambiguous: one hour = one hour, no matter how you spend it.

Angry birds or crushed candies aren't my thing. I'm all about the card games, of which there are more than enough in the app store to last a lifetime. Someone just keeps inventing different ways to play solitaire. (In an alternate reality, that would probably be my dream job.) I wonder if the folks at Microsoft, who introduced computer solitaire in 1990 as a fun way to teach people how to use a mouse, had any idea how insanely popular the game, and its many offspring, would become. 

This week, I said no to those nefarious time-wasters and their come-hither sound of shuffling decks, their daily challenges, their celebratory animations after a win. I said no to the quick card breaks between chores and tasks and errands. I said no to one more game before lights out. I said no, no, no.

And I discovered something better to fill that gap: pretty much anything. Leaf through a magazine, read a few pages of a book, strum the ukulele, wipe some crumbs off the kitchen counter. This year of Take It or Leave It--which I can't believe is rapidly drawing to a close--has really been all about managing habits. Trying to make good ones and break bad ones. In all honesty, a week isn't long enough to make or break a habit. But it is long enough to shine a light on it and do some evaluating.

Did I miss the card games? I did. And at the end of the week, when I deleted (most of) them, it felt a little weird. I'm not saying I'll never play another game of phone solitaire, so I suppose this week isn't a true Take It. But those games are going to be much fewer and farther between.

Now it's time for me to shuffle on out of here. Have a great week, and I'll see you next Wednesday!

The Sound of One (Non-dominant) Hand Clapping

Hello! Welcome to Week 3 of my Take It or Leave It Challenge.

When my mom was a little girl, her older sister taught her to write left-handed. But in elementary school, her teachers determined that she might be more comfortable being right-handed. As a result, she's still ambidextrous enough to write with both hands. That's the cool part. The downside is that she's had lifelong confusion about which hand she should use. 

I have no such problem. If my brain needs something done, it knows to ask Righty. For all intents and purposes, Lefty is just there for symmetry. But I've heard for years that it's good for the brain to call upon the non-dominant hand to help with routine tasks. In fact, ambidexterity training is a thing now, and its proponents claim such benefits as improved neuroplasticity, increased creativity, better memory, less stress, more positive mood... (The other side to the story is research showing that ambidextrous people tend to perform more poorly on certain cognitive tests and may have greater age-related decline in brain volume. Yikes!)

Out of curiosity, I thought I'd try ambidexterity myself. For the last week, I've been calling upon Lefty to help me out with everyday activities: brushing teeth, brushing hair, opening doors, vacuuming, cooking, eating, and the like. Frankly, the results were mixed. First of all, it was really hard to change my ways. I'd be halfway finished with something before I remembered to switch hands. I also learned that there are certain tasks I can't trust Lefty to do. Cutting, for example, with knives or scissors. Anything to do with my contact lenses/eyes. And the hairdryer was fine, but even though I only use a curling iron for smoothing out bed head, Lefty just couldn't manage it. Afraid to go to work with random facial burns, I quickly gave that one up.

To cap off the week, I did the Sunday crossword left-handed, the result being something between a third-grader's homework and a ransom note.

I didn't feel any more creative or less stressed--the opposite, really--but the exercise did present many deep, philosophical questions, such as: Why is there toothpaste on the mirror? Why is my belt on backwards? Who spilled coffee grounds all over the floor? All in all, I'm not a convert to this opposite-hand business, with one exception. Using my non-dominant hand for eating slowed me down and made me much more thoughtful, which is a good thing.

For Take It or Leave It, this one's mostly a Leave It.

All Hail the Mother Log

A month or so ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Northern California's redwood forests for the first time. The giant trees were all I had hoped for and more. As my family and I hiked around in the cool green shade well below the canopy, I felt as if I could be in another world. It seemed impossible that wildfires raged out of control less than a hundred miles away.

In the forest we also saw streams and ferns and banana slugs. And my younger son introduced me to the concept of a mother log, also known as a nurse log. (I prefer the former, so that is the term I will use.) A mother log is a fallen tree, which, through its inevitable decay, helps nurture the next generation of seedlings, as well as a whole ecosystem of plants, insects, and small animals.

The mother log collects water and provides a soft blanket of moss. It shares nutrients with new growth and, depending on where and how it fell, provides access to direct sunlight--a scarce, but necessary, commodity in a dense forest. There is also evidence that a mother log can offer resistance to pathogens. The decaying process may take hundreds of years, during which time the mother log actually contains more living matter than it did when it was alive and upright. It's such a fascinating transformation that in 2006, an artist in Seattle built a greenhouse around a rotting tree and thus turned it into an art installation. (It's called the Neukom Vivarium.)

We all have plans and ideas that fall flat. Sometimes quietly, and sometimes with a resounding crash that shakes the ground beneath us. It can be disappointing and unsettling. Even devastating. All that time and effort, all those resources, feel wasted. But what if we could look at these events not as failures but as a necessary part of the process for ensuring future growth? That brilliant endeavor which toppled so spectacularly might give rise to many more that will eventually take their place in the sun.

I have no trouble imagining potential failure. I have a harder time imagining the potential in failure. But I'm learning that even though it may be hard to see, it's still there. Just like the thousands of microbes, seeds, fungi, beetles, millipedes, and spores waiting to turn a fallen tree into a cradle full of future possibilities.

See You in August!

I have such a hard time being productive in late July that I decided to just go with it and take the last week of the month off. I will see you again in August and wish you all health and happiness until then!

   

Ditching the Hitchhiker

Greetings from my writer's virtual road trip! I'm pleased to report that I reached my first stop, which was to complete the first draft of a speculative fiction manuscript I've had knocking about in my head for a very long time. I'm a slow and not very prolific writer, so managing to accumulate nearly 80,000 words of what my critique group has promised me is not total garbage feels like a big deal. So I spent a day or two congratulating myself.

Then the hitchhiker showed up. It played out something like this:
(twenty-something female wearing white t-shirt and jean cutoffs slides into passenger seat)
Hitchhiker: Hey, you mind if I ride along?
Me: (by nature, almost pathologically polite) Sure, if you want to. There's room.
HH: Where are we going?
Me: I'm figuring that out. I just finished the first draft of a manuscript--
HH: Cool! Tell me about it.
Me: (suddenly self-conscious) Uh, it's a sequel to a novel I wrote a while back. It takes place in a near-future Earth setting, after fires...burned...a bunch of stuff. (shuts mouth before rambling nonsensically about aliens and/or unicorns, neither of which appear in said manuscript)
HH: (brushes neon-pink bangs out of eyes) Okaaay... So, is the first book published?
Me: No.
HH: (raises pierced eyebrow) You spent months of your life writing a sequel to a book that's not even published yet?
Me: (dabs sweat from upper lip) I guess so.
HH: Why?
Me: I wanted to see if I could do the story justice.
HH: (takes a long drink of her Mountain Dew Big Gulp) So, writing is a hobby for you?
Me: Not exactly. I mean, I'd like for it to be more than that. But it's a tough business. And a lot of us who write fiction accept that we don't it for the money.
HH: Pffft. Tell that to Stephen King.
Me: (forces a smile) He's kind of a special case.
HH: And JK Rowling. And James Patterson. And Jodi--
Me: I get it. And I do have a published novel. I'm just not very good at selling books.
HH: You have a kid in college, right? And another one soon to be?
Me: (not at all surprised that she somehow knows this) Yes.
HH: Don't you think it's time to give up this writing thing and get a real job?
Me: Maybe. (bumps head on steering wheel while trying to curl up in fetal position)

This is the mental space I've been in for a week or so. Fun stuff, right? The good news is, now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, it's slightly easier for me to shrug off the negativity and see the situation with a less critical eye. Gaining perspective is helpful, too. Have you ever looked out the rear window during a road trip--after a long, gradual incline, for example--and been amazed at how far you've come without even realizing it?

Even with perspective, I haven't been able to completely ditch the hitchhiker. But now at least she's taking a nap in the back seat, giving me some peace and quiet for figuring out my route ahead.

I'm Not Lost...I Just Don't Know Where I'm Going

I know that last time, I wrote about staycations, so forgive me if this post feels contradictory and/or redundant. But summer is road trip season, which has me reflecting on how fun it is to pack up the car and go exploring, despite my horrible sense of direction. Even with GPS and all the phone navigation apps, I can and do get lost. I read a news story a few years ago about a group of tourists who drove into the ocean because their GPS told them to, and I could completely relate.

For me, there are two ways of feeling lost: not knowing where I am, and not knowing where I’m going. Sometimes they coincide, but not always. Last week, I realized that I’m aware of where I am and what’s keeping me busy, but I’m really not sure which direction I need to be heading. I’m feeling lost in a different sense. The “what am I doing with my life?” sense.

Partly this comes from being overcommitted. You know, when you’re busy with a hundred different things and feel like you’re not doing any of them justice? It’s very destabilizing and is starting to make me stressed-out and grouchy. So, I decided I should take myself on a metaphorical summer road trip and was amazed at how framing my problem in this way immediately made me feel more in control.

First, I need to map my route. I’ll spare you the boring details, but this basically entails breaking down my summer writing goals into a series of achievable steps. That’s not so hard, right? Add in a couple of side trips and stay flexible for detours, and barring any major breakdowns, I will be much farther along than if I stay put where I am, spinning my wheels.

Next, I should decide what to take. In addition to my own works-in-progress, I'll throw in a couple of novels I’ve been wanting to read, a memoir written by a friend, and a complete compilation of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Wine, sure. (Sangria, maybe, as it is 98°F at my house today.) Chocolate, of course. And, hopefully, equal parts creativity and problem-solving.

Now, what not to bring. That matters, too. Taking a parka to Las Vegas in July, for example, is wasted effort and space. So, I'm sorry, social media. You don’t make the cut. I’ll check in once in a while so you know I'm alive and well, but you aren’t going to ride shotgun with me, sidetracking my mental energy. Same for you, online news outlets. Mindless scrolling through articles that somehow change every day but don’t change at all is not the best use of my time right now. It will all be there when I get back.

The point of this “trip” is to get my writing squared away, so it doesn’t matter than I won’t get much farther than my driveway. As my new blogger friend Karen of Profound Journey put it, writing is more an inner journey than an outer one. (Honestly, go visit Karen's blog if you haven't already. She will inspire you for all kinds of journeys!) 

What would you pack for your metaphorical road trip? What would you leave behind?

Lessons from a Mop

I thought I'd give myself a week off from blogging after the A to Z challenge, and all of a sudden, it's been two weeks and counting. That's May for you!

Here's a not-very-interesting fact about me: one of my least favorite domestic tasks is cleaning the floors. I detest the whole "scrubbing on hands and knees" bit, and wrangling with a mop and bucket is only marginally better. Even the no-rinse cleaners seem to leave some residue behind, which my bare feet constantly try to detect and analyze. (Because apparently my feet don't have anything better to think about.)

Last week, I finally gave in and bought a steam mop, which uses only hot water to clean and sanitize. After I finished the floors in record time, with zero sticky feet, I held the mop tenderly in my arms and asked where it had been all my life.

The point of this tale of domestic drudgery is that it got me to thinking about the concept of working smarter, not harder. That familiar phrase is one of those business-speak platitudes I've largely ignored because I like to think I'm special and above such things. But now, thanks to my new best friend Moppy, I'm looking at my life and wondering how else I can work smarter, not harder.

(For the record, I do not believe that smart and hard are mutually exclusive. I suppose we should all endeavor to work smarter AND harder. But I'm not sure a mop can help me with that.)

So, I did what any diligent modern person does, and I googled "work smarter, not harder." Dozens of tips popped up. Many of them were familiar to me and might be to you, as well. Delegate. Follow up. Stay off the internet. Get a good night's sleep. Restrict how many times you check email. Understand the value of your time.

But a few jumped out at me as a bit more original and more pertinent to my lifestyle:

Make a "to-don't" list for things you shouldn't waste time on. I love this tip, which is credited to Tom Peters, because, for me, seeing something written down is much more effective than my usual nagging mental loop.

Carry a notebook and pen, because you never know when inspiration will strike. Hey, if it was good enough for Thomas Edison, it's good enough for me. Plus, I won't waste a lot of mental energy trying to remember all the ideas I forgot.

Be quick but don't hurry. This comes from famed UCLA coach John Wooden. It resonated with me because I know that when I'm doing something at a comfortably quick pace, I'm efficient and energetic. When I have to hurry, however, I feel a little frantic and get sloppy.

Establish opening and closing rituals for your work day. Give your brain consistent cues to tell it when to start work...and when to quit work and sneak off to watch The Handmaid's Tale.

Spend ten minutes a day laughing out loud. Laughter reduces stress hormones and increases oxygen to the brain, both of which do wonders for productivity.

All in all, these are easy things I can incorporate into my life, but I'm still open to suggestions. How do you work smarter, not harder?