Zen and Let it Go

The past week/month have resembled Chutes and Ladders a bit…climb up the ladder, work on good habits, work on focus, tippy toe out of my comfort zone, then Whoosh! Down the chute of a hospital visit or a weeklong headache or chaos I have to wade through but can’t alleviate.  I am not sure why this surprises me—I think it’s just that some days life feels like The Most Endless Game of Chutes and Ladders EVER (anyone who has ever played this game with a three year old knows what I mean…and unlike Candyland, you can’t really “help” the spinner avoid that last giant slide right before the finish. There is no Queen Frostine card that can magically get placed at the top of the deck…not that I have ever done that. *cough).

Slogging through some of my resolutions (side note, this January feels pretty endless), I am confronted again by the reality of how much of my mental energy is spent summoning the will to climb the ladders, and finding the peace to not wail in despair while I’m going down a chute AGAIN. Reframing in gratitude helps. Yoga helps. Even gentle yoga during the weeklong headache helped.  Keeping up with the simple habits (morning devotional, etc.) helps when the bigger stuff seems hard.

I am also realizing more and more how much of life is not just made up of metaphorical Chutes and Ladders, but how much of everything is a push/pull, a back/forth, opposite moments that both work together and pull against each other. I know I have to be braver about certain things, like being by people (still trying), or taking opportunities that come (writing work, check), or trying to conquer fears (booked a flight, like on an ACTUAL AIRPLANE, CHECK). I also know that sometimes being brave or taking care of my brain means pulling BACK from things—saying “ok” and walking away from chaos, avoiding certain situations, working to not care more about things I cannot fix than the people who are generating the issue care.  I am not very good at this yet, and that lack of skill creates a lot of frustration.

I need to go forth and get things done, while stepping back/away from other things.

This challenges me. 

For every flight I book (ok, one flight, and we’ll see if I survive—and if I don’t—for the record—no regrets. If it’s my time it’s my time, regardless of my altitude, you can’t avoid when it’s your time—that is how I made peace with this. Ok, and I bought some of my sister’s art on a backpack on Society6 as a reward), I have to get better at finding ways to step back from things without feeling bad/angry/frustrated about my inability to fix things or make things right.  I’ve gotten better at walking away—I just need to fix my response once I do—I need to figure out how to go all Elsa on that stuff (LET IT GO, LET IT GOOOOOOO!).

But just like a three year old who DOES NOT WANT TO LET GO OF THEIR SPOT ON THE TOP ROW OF CHUTES AND LADDERS, I haven’t figured this one out yet. How do you let things go? My husband can just do it. His brain just sends things on their merry way, while mine cooks up stress stew. THIS is one of my challenges for the New Year—to channel that frustration into more acts of kindness, or zen, or productivity.  I know I have to learn to BE more effectively, but for now…maybe I can use action to help let things go.

And yes, I am thinking this out as I type it. I am tired of being frustrated. And I am determined to get a blog done today—so thanks for thinking through this with me. If you have any insights on HOW you let things go, how do you shed frustration/walk away from situations that cause you mental ugh (and that you cannot remedy)—please comment below. I am crowd-brainstorming solutions here.

And now I have kind of an odd desire to play Chutes and Ladders…

(if anyone is interested in how I am bribing myself to overcome my deep seated and long held phobia of flying, check out Anne Appert Illustration on Society6 Roses by Anne Appert --the backpacks are the right size for the under the seat item on JetBlue. :) --and there are sales all the time, I had a really good coupon for this. I maybe also got a small flying pig tote because a pig flying is about as likely as ME flying, so... yes.  When Pigs Fly by Anne Appert)

Zen and the Slow Leak

My New Year’s Resolution sprung a slow leak that morphed into a gaping hole.

Ok, so in Australia it is Friday…but not last Friday. Nor is it Tuesday. Blog Fail warning horns are blaring everywhere here. Each day I have written BLOG in my bullet journal in increasingly larger letters. Today the word is about an inch high. And fancy.

Even now, I am forcing myself to write—mostly because the alternative is “grade history midterms”. Procrastination priorities are in order, at least…

One of the things I have come to realize is that I have a very limited emotional/mental gas tank. I work really hard to try and keep it full, or at least full-ish. For me, that refilling is a work, it doesn’t just happen. But there are things that put a slow leak to gaping hole kind of kibosh on my tank.

Last week was hospital week. Reports were good. Things are stable. I am grateful.

And yet those days take every bit of mental/emotional energy reserve I have.

I figured Wednesday/Thursday appointments, I’ll be golden to write Friday, heck, I can use my time at the hospital to write!

Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. There is no concentrating at the hospital when you are holding a TGI Friday’s style beeper thing waiting for your child to come out of sedation. There is CERTAINLY no concentration when the time gets long, and then the hospital CALLS YOU ON YOUR CELL PHONE while your child is in the scanner, because your TGI Friday’s beeper didn’t work. Yikes. There is no concentration when you wait several hours past your appointment time to view the scans with a pediatric neuro-oncologist. I pulled out my school papers, looked at them, and put them back in my bag. I just had nothing left to use to think about that. 8+ hours total driving time over two days…car time left no mental room for metacognition. I just can’t concentrate on anything beyond National Geographic or looking out the window/praying for the WaWa coffee cart people to come.

Hospital stuff is just a keep on going kind of moment. I wish that this many years into it I could be less frozen by these days. I am less psycho about them than I used to be, but they still freeze me solid.  In the days after these hospital visits I had to set up the SAME series of appointments for another kid…more chillin’ in the quagmire…but it’s done.

Now that I understand how my brain works, I can plan for it, at least somewhat—but I can’t seem to find a way around that resource suck of hospital days/appointment making/planning/processing—and tackling things I dread. I made some appointments for myself in the last week—gave myself a gold star…and then went and sorted papers kind of mindlessly while listening to Daily Show clips on YouTube. That kind of task is a mental resource suck, too. I just can’t find a way around it.

I just have to make peace with it, and try to keep moving.

So in Australia it’s Friday already—I should be continuing to write about the Happiness Project, and I will get back to that. One of the valuable lessons of that book is to let yourself BE YOURSELF. It’s ok to be who you are, you will find more happiness in NOT trying to force yourself to be something you are not. Being Kristin means acknowledging that I have to regroup after challenging days.  I can’t just breeze through things. And that’s ok. Even when it doesn’t feel ok—that IS ok.  Being Kristin means I hate making phone calls and I have to bribe myself to do it. That’s ok. Being Kristin means even if we are running low on data, I might need to stream some Sia in the car to remind myself I’m unstoppable. That even on these days where I seem stopped, I really am only “like, totally paused”. ;) 

Just keep movin’ right along. If I miss a day, the internet won’t break.

But now, I really do have to go grade those midterms. Or eat lunch.  Hm….wonder which option will win?

Zen and Writing Down the New Year

So did you write down any resolutions this year?

New Year’s resolutions are SO last week, I know—but I love writing down goals, even if they are belatedly shared. I actually love writing down EVERYTHING.  Writing is the only way I can sort out my brain, which is why my few years of mostly silent was kind of alarming for me. The physical act of putting words on a page is very therapeutic.

One of the great gifts of using a bullet journal is that most of my random writing ends up in the journal and not all over my house…although full disclosure, the base of my laptop keyboard is currently set on top of 4 post it notes covered with flight information and hospital notes for this week’s appointments.  But I have far fewer scraps of paper now.

This year, led by the example of my sisters-- not some kind of cosmic sisters, I mean my actual sisters, at least the 4 who happened to be home when I stumbled into their goal setting session-- I wrote “18 for ‘18”—a list of 18 goals for the year.  The “18 for ‘18” caught my imagination. I still have a few slots open in case I get inspired (and I do have one big goal that I don’t want to announce, but I think I am going to write it down when I’m done writing here—when I achieve it I will share. I am determined to beat my brain at its own game)…but most of my goals are set.

Some are big. Some are creative. Some are professional. Some are improbable (will I master an inversion in yoga, like a legit head stand? Going to try!).  Some are scary. But just the act of writing things down helps my zen.  Setting goals helps my zen.  The feeling of getting a fresh start helps my zen. Writing all of these things in colorful felt tip pens brings my zen a whole new level of hooray.

I am trying to encourage my family to try to embrace the zen of writing things down, but right now I am still a voice crying out in the wilderness on that front, even though I got them nice colorful felt tip pens, too.

One of the things I have gained by writing things down is a dual sense of progress (hey, I have been exercising/praying/doing yoga/practicing gratitude  regularly for months!) and a sense of where I am still paralyzed (I am now 4 months past needing to set up certain annual appointments. One of my January goals is “make the darn appointments already”).  Putting the mayhem of my brain into some kind of order, even if that order reveals that I put off scheduling a haircut for 3 months, that order helps my sense of peace. Giving myself gold stars for the things I get done (a Happiness Project insight) gives me a sense of accomplishment. A “W” is a “W”, no matter how small ...from one of Dr. Seuss’s lesser known projects, Horton Keeps On Moving.

I also realize, in writing down calendars and notes about my day, where outside circumstances feed my anxiety. Schedule chaos at work creates a particular set of challenges for my brain.  Unexpected small annoyances get in my head—like how can ShopRite be out of bananas? Literally ONE SAD SOFT BUNCH LEFT??  Sick kids, needing to reschedule very stressful hospital appointments, car problems—all of these normal life things can throw me off my A-game pretty fast, a paradigm I am working hard to shift this year.  Jotting down notes about my day helps me see where my goals are challenged by my sometimes lack of skill in dealing with small adversities. I see how far I still have to go.

 I know that some of this is a product of the Tsunami of Adversity we rode out for years. But I know in 2018 I do not need to be a prisoner to past ways of dealing with things. And writing down goals, habits, resolutions, gratitude, and ongoing progress/paralysis points creates a path towards freedom.

Writing everything down, even in extremely abbreviated form (no long form journal entries—teeny bullet points at best) helps me be more aware of everything, really, instead of being overwhelmed by a sea of swirling stresses. Anxiety thrives in that particular figurative oceanic habitat, and I want to create a different environment for my brain where possible—and work through the moments where anxiety fed by circumstance or otherwise rears its ugly head. 

Starting to keep a bullet journal for my schedule and to-do lists was a goal I made in September, and one that is now a habit. I hope to use this in the New Year to keep track of my progress on my “18 for ‘18”, and to understand why sometimes my progress is at best negligible, or even a weird backflop.

How do you keep track of goals/resolutions? Does any kind of tracking system work for you? If you live with anxiety or generalized ugh, have you found any particular writing strategies helpful?

Next Tuesday I will explain the bullet journal a bit more—this Friday I will continue the Happiness Project conversation. 

Now I have to go put a gold star in my journal because I blogged. J Yay!

Zen and the Happiness Project

On Fridays I plan to write about some of the books I’ve found helpful in my continuing attempts at finding the Lost Kingdom of Zen. Today’s choice: Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”.
Info about The Happiness Project

A few years ago, as I was just figuring out that I might need to try and improve my mental health a speck (*cough, understatement), I discovered Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project.  This book details Rubin’s yearlong study/quest to improve her own personal happiness, and to determine if in fact certain practices CAN increase happiness.

Spoiler alert: Yes. Certain practices CAN increase happiness. Yay!

I like projects. I like research. I knew I would like this book, and I did.  I re-read it at the beginning of last year as part of my quest to get some zen COME HELL OR HIGH WATER…er, I mean, work peacefully at becoming happy and chill and zentastic instead of just frantically waiting for the other shoe to drop as we entered a new season of less frequent MRIs and hopefully less medical smite, after a decade plus of hospital time galore, topped off with several months in 2016 of highly improbable medical ugh. 

Obviously, the work continues, as I am now repeating, “I did not just jinx us. I did not just jinx us. I did not just jinx us.”

Ergh. Zen.

ANYWAY, there are a lot of things in Rubin’s book that have really stuck with me since I first read it. When I decided to write ABOUT the book as part of this blog, I resisted the urge to go back and flip through the pages. What are the lessons/ideas that STAYED with me? THESE were the things that I should include in any writings, because really—the things I remember without looking back at the book are the things that stuck with me the most.
There are many. I highly recommend this book.

Probably the most important one, the one I reference the most in daily zen-pursuit, is “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Reading through Rubin’s meticulous and conversational record of her research methods, I was a speck intimidated by HER perfection (she would probably argue that point, but really—she is intensely talented and driven; her process inspires me). Still—this has become a mantra that I repeat OFTEN.

I am perhaps a bit of a perfectionist. 

Sorry, I should have told you to sit down before I unleashed that shocker on you.

Sadly, I am not the “house in perfect order/always perfectly coiffed/entertaining goddess/paint the cookies with replicas of the Sistine Chapel ceiling” kind of perfectionist. I just get paralyzed by things NOT being perfect, and turn into a speed bump. Especially as I navigated years of medical ugh, I got buried by my life because I just couldn’t figure out the perfect way to hold everything together—and so everything sort of got figuratively MacGyvered or ignored.

This does not create zen.

Although really, how awkward would it be to eat a Sistine Chapel ceiling cookie?

Taking to heart Rubin’s mantra “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” has really, really helped me get more done in my life and NOT be constantly stressed with how not perfect things are. So not every seam was perfect in my daughter’s memory quilt I sewed for Christmas—but it was good. Really good. So I didn’t waste time ripping out tiny imperfections my visually impaired kid would never notice. So the PowerPoint I put together to help my students who need printed out aids for note taking doesn’t have cool animation or interesting graphics—it is good, and serves the purpose for which it’s designed.

Honestly, I frequently say “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” out loud, when I am doing anything creative especially. Perfectionism is the opposite of zen. And for far, far too long I have been sort of tangled in an impossible perfectionistic paralysis.  Just for this one mantra, reading The Happiness Project was a win.

If only just to make myself get that second blog entry out in the first week or January—"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is a win. Still have 1 hour and 46 minutes left in the day! Woo! I will get to put a gold star in my bullet journal…another Happiness Project insight for next week. J  

If you are so inclined, pick up a copy and check it out for yourself—or listen to Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Gretchen Rubin on the most recent Super Soul Sunday podcast.  That’s a great way to get a quick version of some of the key points of the book.

Just Don’t Let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good!

Where to find the Super Soul Podcast

New Year, New Resolve

Happy 2018!

So one of my resolutions for the New Year is….drum roll…

To actually blog 2 times a week like I intended to.

Hm.

I realized I had to address one timing issue (I can’t do my lesson planning for the week on Monday AND blog), and I needed to get determined and just write. Game face on! Carpe all them diems and all that! Go For It!

And then our home became The House of Contagion, starting on Christmas Eve, extending through the entirety of Christmas week, finally easing on New Year’s Day…at which point a different child took the baton of contagion and ran with it—

--In the process, unfortunately running right out of the possibility of making it to today’s 6 month MRI and neuro-oncology appointment in Philadelphia.

After an hour or two of freak out over not knowing what to do, and about 8 phone calls, we received the official radiological word that We Shall Not Scan today.

Instead, we went to the pediatrician to rule out flu, and then spent hours trying to reschedule all of today’s appointments …twice (don’t ask).

And in all of this, I really tried to zen. Ish. Well, depending on the moment. Not going to lie, I did have 20 minutes of lying on my living room rug. Yerp. But I know that in 13.5 years we have never had to reschedule an MRI due to illness. We are so lucky to be able to deal with regular kid sick and not some of the other really awful things we’ve faced in Decembers/Januaries gone by.

Still—blogging about zen seemed a little disingenuous today.

When things get all wonky, out of my control, I get totally thrown off my game.  Order helps me remain calm—and the complete upset of this day for which I had mentally prepared for weeks (and I packed a Just In Case Bag and chose a book to read)…well, that had me completely discombobulated.  In some ways it was a bit of a reminder as to why I struggled so much when my daughter was on treatment and more days were like this than not.  My brain gets rattled with all the logistics and questions and temperature taking and bedding washing and such. Focus is hard, even with taking a few minutes to ride the stationary bike and do a New Year’s yoga routine. I wonder as I wander…actually. Wondering and wandering happen.

So I guess today is really a question for all of you—what the heck do you do when your day spirals so far off course you are left in the middle of your kitchen yelling “you are killing me, Smalls!” at the hold music that repeats and repeats and repeats relentlessly? How do you focus/stay on track/regroup?

I am realizing this is something I really, REALLY need to work on this year. Life is just too unpredictable to NOT work on this. So—any ideas? How do you keep things together when nothing is holding together? How do you keep the herd of kittens of life all heading in the same direction?

Peace & purell to you all—and hey, this isn’t pretty, but the Tuesday blog happened. Win!