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That Moment before the Moment

Random thoughts December 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Christmas is hours away, ready or not. This is the moment for the deep breath, the step back, the last survey of status. Time for a last minute tweak here, an addition there, perhaps small changes in one or two things. And then enjoy what rolls out. Whatever it might be.

I used to be one of those people who melted into tears when the slightest thing started to go awry from how I had pictured. (Now granted perfection is something that you reform from endlessly – there is no such thing as a reformed perfectionist.) Oddly, it was my wedding that taught me the alternate beauty in planning and then letting the event unfold as it would. The stories are in the unplanned moments. Even the mishaps.

Right now I am working my way through my least favorite part of the holiday – wrapping gifts. You’re with me on this, yes? Even with favorite Christmas carols as back drop, exasperation is ready to pounce. Once I struggle through to the end, I also know that I will have that feeling of dismay at the small array of gifts after weeks and hours of careful effort. Every year it seems as if the resulting pile doesn’t quite match the time and thought I put in.

This moment before the big moment happens all the time – before an interview, a big dinner, a presentation, a date, a party… We shouldn’t miss this chance to review, but neither should we use it for recriminations, or to build fear. We have done what we could – this time – and can make note of improvements for next time. Then breathe. And enjoy.

I hope that you have many moments to enjoy over this holiday season.

Twas the Week Before Christmas (Redux)

Random thoughts, Work Life December 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the work-place,

Creatures were hurrying, scurrying and running the rat race.

“I have to get done, have vacation to take –

Off to Grandma’s, the in-laws or maybe the lake!”

Now I was just watching quietly from my cube

Hoping to get out at lunch at take my car for a lube

Christmas carol melodies floating through my head

While on my computer, emails I read, read, read

When out on the floor there arose such a clatter,

I looked over the wall to see what was the matter –

A vision of senior management all dressed like St Nick

Ho Ho’ing and marching down the aisle right quick!

A parade of employees trailing in their wake,

Everyone heading to the boardroom, a feast to partake

Deciding my car would have to take care of itself,

I jumped up and followed the nearest old elf!

(With thanks and apologies to Clement Moore)

(First posted 12/19/12 on my original blog, Practical Business | Reasonable Expectations – does it make it a ritual with one repeat?)

The Quality of Sound

Random thoughts December 16, 2013 1 Comment

It looks as though we may be in for a cold and snowy winter season. I’m sure that some of you are smiling and cheering but I am equally sure that there are plenty in my camp of winter endurers. I believe that I have mentioned before some of the litany of why I am not a fan of winter – there is the cold, the snow, the slush, the cold, salt everywhere, exponentially bad driving and the cold. Did I mention the cold? I am also worn down by the monochromatic vistas – wonderfully dotted with Christmas decorations for the next couple of weeks.

But I digress. There is one thing about winter that pleases me, which I rediscover every year. This thing that quietly delights me is the quality of the sound when there is a blanket of snow on the ground. The snow brings a silence that is very welcome in this time of electronic beeps, dings, trills, buzzes, and tweets. Nature has many methods of redirecting our attention to joys it has to offer.

Looking for a means to soothe your hectic pre-Christmas day, go out into your backyard for a few minutes to commune with the quality of sound. Softer sounds are muffled as the snow acts as natural baffles and round out many noises. Sharp sounds crack, shattering the brittle cold air but are quickly replaced with that enveloping silence.

To get the full effect it is best to get to a park or nature preserve or any tract which is populated more by trees than the constructs of humans, but it isn’t entirely necessary. Especially after dark. Your backyard will do nicely. If you haven’t taken the time to experience the way that snow changes sounds since childhood, I suggest that it is high time that you do so.

The crunch as you break through the crust of the snow, the sound of your own breath, the rustle of small animals, and the creaks and cracks of trees shifting under the weight of the snow. These are the little gifts of winter.

Boosting that Mood

Random thoughts December 13, 2013 Leave a comment

(I admit to updating this post from last year, see my recent post on the busy season as my excuse.)

Memories of Christmases past

This is the happiest, most joyful time of the year. Or it is supposed to be, so I thought it appropriate to remember that regardless of evidence to the contrary, there is always joy to be found. I learned this from my mom who was the most perennially positive person I have ever known. Personally, I tend to melancholy, but having been raised within the realm of her spirit of joy, I am now the most upbeat melancholic you will ever meet.

Mom sang – whether to express actual joy or to bring it when it was flagging. She would just burst into a specific song, ring out a few notes, or hum. She would also ‘throng’ (her word) upon the piano. I find myself doing the same, usually making up nonsense verses based on known songs. This is because I discovered as I moved farther into adulthood that the singing was like a talisman against negativity.

Singing is my ritual. Not, that I am any good – but that isn’t the point.

There is a power to ritual that we modern people seem to have forgotten. We leave rituals inside the place of worship for the most part and we shouldn’t. Rituals are soothing and can focus or refocus the mind to a more positive bent in the midst of a hectic day. The one ritual I can think of outside of religion is the making and drinking of tea. What rituals do you follow?

“Happiness is the whole aim and end of human existence.”

~Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Rut is the ugly side of rituals; these are bad habits that we get into that encourage negative feelings for the most part. We should all take care to root ruts out of our days by replacing them with simple rituals that will refocus our minds to the potential good things going on.

6 Happiness Tools from What Happy People Know:

Appreciation
Choice
Personal Power
Leading with your Strengths
The Power of Language & Stories
Multidimensional Living

Dan Baker, PhD. & Cameron Stauth

I hope you discover some joyful rituals in the coming days. And if you hear someone humming down the aisle from you in the store, it might be me so give that person a smile as you pass.

Random Things for which I am Thankful: Making Connections

Random thoughts November 29, 2013 Comments: 5

I read this short story in my early teen years that described an unusual and cleverly designed prison. The cells were set up in a sort of spiral within a stone enclosure. Each cell contained one prisoner and the prison term for that prisoner was based on the length of time that it would take for his cell to work through the spiral to the opening once again. During his term he would have no contact with other people. I found this both fascinating from a logical standpoint – how would he eat, how did they remove waste, etc.; and horrifying from a human standpoint.

I no longer remember the title or the author but the premise for this story stuck in my mind. Perhaps because it is the antithesis of our social human experience. The time alone appealed to my introverted side, but disturbed my extroverted brain cells. Even the most rabidly introverted person can usually see some benefit in connecting with other people, if within a much smaller group.

At about the same age that I came across this story, I believed that if you made a deep connection with someone, you would remain connected to that person forever. I have a collection of hurtful memories that belie that idea. Connection does not equate loyalty or longevity, but it doesn’t require these traits to be worthy.

A person met in a time of need and never seen again can have a profound effect upon you. One person caused a terrifying car accident when my boys were very small but I choose to remember the dozen or so strangers who stopped and offered assistance without ever expecting anything in return. I return this gift by doing the same whenever I can for other strangers in need. These are the fleeting connections that go under the name of random acts of kindness. They strengthen our humanity.

We have blood connections with family that extend from close relatives to cousins two and three times removed. There are shared experiences of various family gatherings, there is a built in support network when times are tough. My aunt and uncle took time out of their busy schedules to drive up and sit with my boys when I had major surgery a few years back. It was right before Christmas but they understood that my boys would need to have advocates who had been through such an experience before.

The sibling relationship is so nuanced and complex. We have shared so much, but sometimes as rivals and sometimes as allies. When it comes down to it, a brother might be the worst tease of a sister but don’t take that to mean that as an outsider to the family you can do the same. The brother may take you to task. (Can you tell that my brother teased my sister and me mercilessly as children?)

Then there are friends and acquaintances. The selection process for these connections begins randomly – a shared class or activity – and grows deliberately in depth, breadth and length as we nurture the relationships. My oldest active friendships originated in my junior high years. The interactions may go dormant here and there and due to all my moves we have a physical distance as a barrier, but we remain friends. Connected. In this past year I have added new people to this category; met randomly, identification of some kindred sensibility, connection growing.

I should have written names back in the day, but I am still connected to 4 of the 13, not counting myself.

Sometimes I might feel as though I am stuck in a stone cell, but I can shake this feeling off by remembering all my varied connections.

Random Things for which I am Thankful: Reading

Random thoughts November 27, 2013 Comments: 2

Reading has been a great boon for me.

There are many things that crowd in and call out for our attention, some important and others not terribly so. We must constantly prioritize all of these external needs, not forgetting that we have our own different internal needs. I want to focus on one need that is usually quiet and reserved – therefore not often gaining the attention that it deserves from us in the clamor from all the other things in our lives.

We should feed our brains regularly. Sure you think that your brain gets plenty of stimulation with that impossibly long to-do list. Stimulation and feeding are very different things. I’ll explain what I mean by feeding, I think you are plenty clear on stimulation.

Remember back into your early days when you were eager to learn things that adults knew and that seemed wholly mysterious to you? Like reading. I hope that you have at least one memory of curling up in an adult’s lap and reading. While you search your memory, I’ll share some of my thoughts on reading and some memories.

The earliest books that we were given had wonderful pictures and some had a combination of pictures and these black shapes that adults could decode. Growing curious, it started to become clear that many of the shapes repeated again and again and they were somehow related to the words that the adult would say to tell us the story. How many of you had a favorite story or two that you knew so well you could pretend to read it?

When it was time we finally went to school and learned how to make sense of those shapes, called letters, and to understand how they combined to make words and sentences which made up these stories that opened up our worlds to things far beyond what we could experience in our little neighborhoods.

Reading became something that could be shared such as story time at the library, or as part of a classroom lesson – or reading could be something that could be done alone. For me, reading was always a treat. Gradually the books became longer and the pictures less frequent but the words would create pictures in my mind to flesh out the story.

As I grew I always had a book that I was reading for pleasure – even as an English major in college when I had quite a stack to read for class. I made time for reading with each new stage of my life. Then as an expectant mother I had visions of the joy that would come out of sharing my reading passion with my baby.

And we did read together, and it was just as wonderful to be the adult cuddling a child in my lap as it had been to be the read-to cuddled child. (The downside of early motherhood, especially after I had 2 little ones, was that I only managed to read one very short book for my own pleasure in a whole year’s time.)

My boys and I read together often, even once they could read on their own and they got into all the after school activities. Then our shared reading time moved to a bedtime ritual. We progressed into classics like Watership Down and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I skipped the Elvish). It was regular together time that fed all of our minds. I was devastated when they told me perhaps it was time to stop once they were in their early teen years.

I consoled myself with the thought that we had kept story time going much longer than most other families. Plus we had the bonus of the Harry Potter series. We reconvened for the latest in that series until my older son was 16. (Sadly, we each read the last book separately – but discussed it together afterward.)

These are good memories with my boys. I have so many more memories of books that resonate for me down through my years – books that I read as a teen or young adult that have deep meaning to this day.

I know that your life is full of so very many obligations, I do. But your brain wants to be fed. One of the simplest ways to accomplish this is to pick up a book. Any book on a topic that interests you – fiction, biography, sports. I will tell you that it can take me a ridiculously long time to finish even escapist fiction. I might only read a page or two in a day. But that page or two takes me away from the everyday of my own life and allows me to experience life as someone else.

Reading about something outside your own experience, fiction or not, provides the opportunity to expand your knowledge base and the mental tools that you use to be successful.

Random Things for which I am Thankful: Opportunities

Random thoughts November 25, 2013 Leave a comment

A person once told me that ‘You have to try new things’. Now we’ll set aside the irony that at the time of the telling, despite my lower age, I had already tried many more things than this person and we’ll focus on the intent of the statement itself. She was right.

There are so many quotes from well-known people past and present about opportunity, carpe diem (seize the day), that I could fill the rest of this post with worthy quotes and have done. Plus there are whole books on this topic, but my take is why I am thankful for opportunity.

I would, and did, tell people right on up through my 30s that I was risk averse. I wanted a quiet, pleasant, family-centric life filled with familiar things and regular rituals like gathering for Thanksgiving. My life had taken me to different cities, in 6 states, which stretched my shyness sorely. I learned to advocate for myself and my family because we were far from the support of extended family. I had seen all the bumps and hassles with moving companies and utilities and the like as pure frustration, but looking back these were opportunities to learn to be polite but firm, to probe for mutual solution, to be my own best advocate.

Moving regularly means leaving behind family and friends, again and again. It means being the new person wishing for a friendly face. It means learning how to turn a stranger into a friendly face by taking small steps; by not fearing a roomful of people. Moving taught me the baby steps to networking long before the word’s definition included this facet of making new contacts and turning those contacts into relationships of varying degrees. Back then a network was CBS, NBC or ABC.

Moving means getting acquainted with the fear of the unknown. Whether the move is a happy thing, or a necessity it is a change in routine, a new set of places to learn; familiar possessions in new positions and unfamiliar rooms. It shakes things up and rearranges. Complacency is broken, sometimes providing fertile ground for new ideas to grow. ‘I can’t do that’ can be seen from a new angle to realize, ‘Well, I know most of what I need to do that’. Moving gets a person to develop what resilience they have naturally, which is really handy when life offers other bumps in your road.

I haven’t talked about opportunity in the familiar manner – get a job offer that you can’t refuse sort of thing. Because opportunity is often much more subtle than that and therefore far more frequent. We aren’t likely to get amazing job offers out of the blue very often, but opportunities probably present themselves almost daily if we pay attention.

Coloring, Color, Colorful

Random thoughts November 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Did you like to color as a child? A boxful of crayons and a coloring book, a rainy afternoon, a good spot at the table – happiness was mine. I envied the kids who got the big box of crayons but I could do a lot by blending colors. I manage to revisit this simple pleasure periodically – with my own boys, then nieces and nephews. The kids grow out of their coloring stage and my urge goes dormant.

My Crayon Stash

But not the joy that I get from color – I am not a monochromatic person – my preference for color is always active. Over the years the colors on the palette that attract my eye the most have changed. In childhood it seemed that everyone said their favorite color was blue, so I decided that I wasn’t a fan. Until cobalt blue came into my life. And I had a sweet little electric blue car for a few years. Plus combine blue with green and I can feel my muscles relaxing.

Walk through a garden with its green and splashes of color and suddenly you realize that there are countless shades and tones to a single color. I dare you not to smile. Your heart not to feel just a bit lighter.

I live in the suburbs, more green that many cities, but mostly shades of concrete. Bleh. When I can get in the car and drive away until green is the predominant color, I can feel my breathing getting deeper and my eyes seem to see more clearly – cleansed of all the suburban tans.

I do wear the neutrals – your grays, blacks, browns and tans – as a basis for some type of color. I would have made a terrible Goth going around trying to add a spot of color to everyone else’s outfit. Just ask anyone I see regularly who wears too much black.

How about you – how does color affect you? Or doesn’t it?

The Cold is Coming

Random thoughts November 11, 2013 Comments: 4

The sun has melted today’s light layer of frost from the still green grass and shrubs. I read a brief article in the paper a couple of days ago that our autumn is protracted this year because it started out and stayed mild for so long. I read a different article early last month that predicted a cold and snowy winter (of course I believe that was the prediction for my area last year too, which was far from the truth). Cold is coming.

Frost on dying peony leaves.

I’ve lived in places that experience all four seasons for most of my life and I do like three of them – it is a toss-up whether spring or fall is my most favored. But I haven’t ever been a fan of winter with its limited color palette; difficulty in getting around in snow, ice and slush; few hours of daylight; and nippy temperatures.

I can only think back on a handful of times in my life that I enjoyed winter – a few blissful afternoons sledding with friends, learning to ice skate, and the stark beauty and silence of a frigid winter night with the crunching crust of snow underfoot as almost the only sound. Certainly joyful things have occurred in winter months, but these were not dependent upon the winter weather as part of their charm.

We humans like to make adjustments to our general environment to suit our own needs, so in my imaginings I have wiped away winter. But the wild green growing things that are now settling into dormant slumber need this respite to thrive. And I can’t deny them this necessity since they offer me so much the other 3 seasons of the year.

I am therefore, deeply grateful that I live in this age of central heating with programmable thermostats – allowing for a comfortable room temperature when it is time for me to get up in the morning. I wince at the discomfort for our ancestors who had to gather their fortitude just to get up and start a fire to be warm.

I appreciate that we have holidays during these cold months which will add splashes of color to the whites, browns and tans nature offers – red and green for Christmas, more red for Valentine’s Day. Colors are important for visual interest and stimulation. Not to mention how they can affect mood.

Every year at this time I watch the birds fly south (I walked past a tree full of songbirds the other day, probably the last for a few months) and wonder how I might do the same. I read about the animals who hibernate, and have been dodging all the squirrels frantically preparing for their long sleep, and wonder if that might be my solution. Knowing that neither option is viable for me, but wishing all the same.

Perhaps you will help me to pass the time, and make it worthwhile, through this cold and dormant season?

Unexpected Pleasures

Random thoughts November 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Obligations, have-tos, to-dos, endless tasks mounded here and there in front of us until the end of time. Or so it often appears. Why look up and out when only these nagging things are there to confront us? Why look about when more might present themselves and insist on being addressed?

Well, serendipitous things can happen if you look up and look about and you can miss them if you are mired in the mundane. I had two quite serendipitous experiences last week and I am still smiling in remembering each. Dreary and rainy days, both. Bleh.

Walking out the back door from work at the end of one day with a colleague, we were met by the beautiful sight of a perfect and complete rainbow. The north side ending picturesquely behind trees decked out in their finest fall colors and the other blocked by the industrial building behind ours. The entire arc completely visible, which is even more rare than a rainbow itself and therefore to be savored.

public domain rainbow image

My mom always took particular delight in rainbows, so I couldn’t help but think she had a hand in this gift from nature as I drove home and watched it fade. Quite pleasing and smile inducing, still.

Then on a different day, running errands at the store, I rounded the corner into the dish soap aisle and saw someone I know who I haven’t seen for almost a year. She had her back to me, but I was instantly both slightly disoriented to see her and certain that it was her. (Just to add to the serendipity, when I went to put away the dish soap later at home, it turned out that I still had an unopened bottle in the cupboard so if I hadn’t imagined that I was in need I would not have even been in that aisle.)

We stood in that aisle and caught up for almost an hour, moving over for various other shoppers who were focused on their mission. It was so good to see her and such happenstance it gave me a nice boost.

Neither of these little moments would have been noted if I hadn’t been looking up and around, aware of my surroundings. I’m so glad that I was.