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Busy Season, Busy Reasons

Uncategorized December 11, 2013 Leave a comment

Being busy seems to be a badge of honor on a regular day, but these last weeks of the year ratchet up the busy with all the holiday expectations. Chasing some ideal of getting it all done and making it perfect seems to make many people hate this season. I do get that crazy hope of achieving a blank to-do list. But there is a heavy Sisyphean aspect to this hope, and I really don’t want to hate this season.

I want to enjoy the glitter of the lights as I drive down a cold, dark street and feel pleased that so many people want to decorate their homes for me and the other passersby. The days may be shorter but festive lights offer a smile inducing alternative.

I want to take pleasure in the selection of gifts for the people on my list. (Luckily I have a fairly short list.) If I start early enough, then I can take the time to think about the person that I am shopping for, remember good moments, and hopefully pick out a gift that will be meaningful to them.

I want to savor the aromas when I bake breads or cookies to share. Many of the recipes that I use have been passed down and have become tradition. The recipe cards are written in handwriting of family members no longer with us, reminding me of past kitchen moments.

Yes, all of our regular tasks and obligations press in, and holiday expectations pile on top not temporarily take the place of the everyday. But it is only here briefly this time and we shouldn’t be so intent on making the season perfect for someone else that we miss out on the wonder for ourselves.

Hear the words of those carols playing in the stores, let them transport you to childhood wonder and delight. Just for a minute. Joy to the world and God bless us, everyone.

Front and Center, Through it All

Personal Growth, Work Life December 9, 2013 Comments: 2

I love parades and try to devote at least a part of my Thanksgiving morning to watching the parades even as I have become an adult responsible for getting the big feast cooking. Parade watching on TV is a cherished part of my Thanksgiving rituals. But I have noticed a change, rather at some point the way that parades are broadcast was changed and I am now aware of this result.

Parade_float_in_Gatton,_possibly_to_celebrate_peace_after_World_War_I

photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In my childhood, the cameras focused on the floats and parade participants, the announcers providing their chatter as backdrop and occasionally coming in to view to announce a commercial break. These days, a person is lucky to catch a glimpse of parade participants over the shoulder of the announcers as the camera focuses incessantly upon them as they bring in a continuous parade of minor celebrities and periodically mention the bothersome parade that is happening behind them.

This got me thinking about the spotlight. Some people like to be right in the center of the glow, some can come and go, some enjoy the periphery and others want to be far off in the other direction. Life is best when there is a variety of types, all sorting to their preferred spot.

The thing is, though, that sometimes that spotlight should swing off the person who wants to be front and center and sometimes it should illuminate that person who prefers to exist in obscurity. Sometimes a team, an ensemble, a band, a cast should be in that light together. Hundreds of people must come together to pull off a successful parade. It is a display, an event that deserves attention. Even the people who take a support role want the result of their effort to be experienced by as many viewers as possible.

I find myself moving around in my chair as if I were actual standing on the side of the street and if I adjust I might be able to see the actual main event, the parade, around the obstruction of the announcers. Yes, I understand that these announcers are pleased with the spotlight, but this isn’t their turn. It is the turn of the hundreds of people who started planning this parade the moment last year’s parade ended. Possibly before.

I am frustrated that I hardly saw a moment of the parade that I turned on the TV to see, but this has really opened my eyes to all the small moments that happen every day – the things that don’t get noticed. I want to keep this revelation front and center, to acknowledge efforts large and small.

Wanted to do This, but That Got in the Way

Personal Growth, Work Life November 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Have you ever just been eager to start on something but been prevented because something that you need to do what you want requires attention before you can get into your desired task? So frustrating!

For the last month plus I have been finding more often than not that when I sit down to write – blog post idea percolating away in my head – my Microsoft Word must be reinstalled. Grrr. Now I must deal with this technical issue and risk losing the essence of my post idea unless I start to write it out long hand. My thoughts come faster than I can sketch out this way, that is why I love composing on the computer.

There are plenty of other examples; getting ready to bake something and finding I am short on a key ingredient, wrapping a package and the tape is missing in action, nearing the end of a project but still have an open question due from someone else. So close, and yet… Ticking this task off the to-do list will just have to wait. Darn it.

Pushme-Pullyou from the original Dr Doolittle movie. (my appreciation has lasted a lifetime)

A few years ago I just couldn’t quite motivate myself to get in the car and go off on vacation. A vacation that included my cousin’s wedding. I’m not sure what prompted my malaise, but I waited until the morning of departure to pack and then did so in a desultory fashion, all the while fighting with the idea that I just wouldn’t go. When I finally got myself on the road, it was only perhaps an hour into the drive when I started to think of toiletries and other items that I had forgotten to pack and by the time I stopped for a break I had almost a dozen things listed.

It wasn’t anything that I couldn’t replace at the nearest drug store – the worst was my favorite lipstick and the drug store where I stopped didn’t have an equivalent color. And it was more my own head that got in the way in this instance and created external obstacles, but I still had to push through it. I did end up having a lovely time, and a much needed break from work.

Hmm, my frustration with Word is what prompted this post and I’ve taken it somewhere I didn’t intend. I guess my point then is that it is good to plan, but also to push through the unplanned or frustrating parts.

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?

Intellectual Calisthenics

Personal Growth, Work Life November 13, 2013 Comments: 4

Some weeks just seem to be overfull of mental obstacle courses – over this wall, through that muck, around the barrier, dodge the danger zone, swim this channel, start this next obstacle course. And again. Oh my.

photo credit: Wikipedia, Marine Pull ups

The brainy neuroscience folks like to tell us that this is good for our minds, keeps us sharp. Hmm, I feel more like I have a puddle in my head after a couple of days like this and can’t be trusted to decide what’s for dinner. I don’t really care in those moments that I might be lowering my risk of dementia. In fact I tend to feel slightly demented after too many days of intellectual calisthenics.

One good puzzle here and there and I agree, my brain is the better for the exercise. For instance in the calm quiet as I write this, it has been a good challenge to remember how to spell calisthenics. (My fingers don’t want to spell it correctly and resent that I keep using the word.) It’s when there is a relentless string of exercises that things get wearing. Like I’m in my own extended, real life version of a disaster movie. How much more can be piled on?

(That last question is rhetorical, I don’t really want to find out. I thought that I better put that point out there, just in case some force wants to explore the answer.)

Well, the sun is shining and that is a November feat not to be ignored, so perhaps I should take a break from intellectual exercise and go get some of the physical kind. The leaves need to be raked, so I’ll think about that as I take a walk and soak up some sun rays.

How have you exercised your own mind lately? And how do you feel about 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.

The Power of the Right Word

Business Writing, Personal Growth, Work Life, Writing November 4, 2013 Leave a comment

We learn to speak without understanding the power of language. We just know that we start to associate specific combinations of sounds to the result that we want – combining sounds to produce ‘juice’ gets us a sweet, cold beverage that slakes our thirst. So we say it again when our mouth is dry and we need liquid. Other sound combinations get results too – uttering ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ gets lots of wonderful attention, hugs and kisses. Score!

Somewhere along the line we experience the pain of words too. A casually repeated word like ‘dummy’ gains a lecture about not hurting others perhaps. But do we really understand the power of words yet?

Learning that certain words have specific associations to a place – the playground has looser rules than the classroom – teaches us a level of appropriateness, but not necessarily understanding. We have just enough to know how to be hurtful without knowing why we might be hurtful.

I love words – their sound, combining them for just the right effect – I love to read them and to write them. I want to understand them, not just use them. When I am trying to make a point with people who don’t have the same intense relationship to words I like to use an example. If you need a group to listen you can say different things – examples run from ‘Be quiet’ to ‘Shut up’. These are essentially the same command but they have very different connotations for the listeners. If you would like to show authority, but not disrespect toward the group, then your option is clearly ‘be quiet’, ‘quiet, please’ or something along that line.

I know that I cannot expect others to love words as I do. But this example usually helps to gain understanding. In English, we have many options to say something, to get our point across – all valid – which makes choosing the right option for the circumstance an important step. What do we intend to convey? Who is our audience? What is important within the message that is also important to the audience?

There is so much that should go into word choice, too much for one blog post. I need a reminder now and then that words have alternate meanings, even regional meanings sometimes, and that the point of combining sounds into words and words into sentences and paragraphs is to communicate. Communicating isn’t just about what I want to say, but about how the person or group who will receive the message will perceive it. The right word has great power, and the wrong word – well, there is usually a long list of trending social media topics about the famous folks who chose the wrong word at the wrong time.

Too Much on my Mind to be Nice Too

Personal Growth, Work Life October 30, 2013 Leave a comment

I was scrambling about the other day trying to find something that I knew I had and just couldn’t remember where it was at (I no longer remember what it was at all) when I came across an article about the hazard of an overfull brain to the pleasantries of life. Eureka a small part of my brain said! Stick to the task at hand the rest of my brain said.

Anyway, let’s assume that I completed the original task because it isn’t really important to the story anymore. What is important is that I was brought up to be polite, always, everywhere, no exceptions. (It turns out that there are valid exceptions, but we’ll address that some other time.) You who are over a certain age know what I am talking about. My mom went to great lengths to teach us manners.

photo credit: Wikipedia, Emily Post – the mother of American Etiquette

So much so that one Thanksgiving she invented an elaborate system of signals to my brother and I to point out any indiscretions on our parts but then proceeded to tell the whole table about the system thereby negating the system itself. (It was a pain to learn it all too…) I think that she got embarrassed making all the signals, and then we got confused. Well, everyone thought it was amusing at the time.

I digress again. The article gave me absolution, of a sort, when I forget the niceties when I am laser focused on some issue or solution. This is something that I am constantly on myself about to improve. I know people who never fail to be accommodating and spot on polite and I am impressed and slightly shamed at the same time.

I don’t mean to say that I am rude when I am in this focused mode, I just forget my pleases and thank yous. Until later, sometimes much later. I might forget to wait my turn, too if it is really urgent.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember anything else about the article – where I saw it, the title, who wrote it. But it was based on scientific research. You’ll just have to take my word on it. I don’t mean to be impolite, my thoughts are just too focused on the task at hand. Let’s just say the solution part of the brain isn’t paying any attention to the polite part at that moment.

Please tell me that I am not alone in this – you know what I am talking about here. If you are a person who never fails to be polite, regardless of what is on your mind, do tell how you do it.

The Clutter in my Mind

Personal Growth, Work Life October 28, 2013 Leave a comment

Do you have those days when you have meeting after meeting – and the ‘action items’ that always seem to come after – and then you get back to your desk to find you have more voicemails than time to get back to the people plus a line of team members who have been lurking in hopes to see you between meetings to get an answer or follow up on previous action items? And then you go home and don’t have time to make dinner plus eat it before there are other activities to do/attend/lead/prepare for? And then fall into bed and your brain laughs at you – sleep, I’d love to, but you haven’t given me a moment to myself today so I have a lot to mull over here and this is the first moment that you’ve given me so we are definitely not sleeping yet.

photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, Interior of a storeroom

Whew, hope you followed me through that long, run-on paragraph. Most of us would rather be busy than idle, particularly at work. Idle time at home is often bliss, but at work it is frustrating. Crazy busy is a completely different level – the one that leads to stress diseases and burn out if it is sustained. I’ve been bouncing up into the level between good busy and crazy busy. (Glad I haven’t been crazy busy since an SAP implementation project a few years ago now.)

I don’t have a name for this level but I find that it leaves a lot of clutter in my mind – the half formed idea to resolve an open question from a meeting two days ago that died because I didn’t get back to it in time, indeed I piled other half formed ideas on top of it from other meetings. Now the desiccated idea is just taking up space in my mind. Alongside a hyperactive to-do list that changes every other minute. And barely formed thoughts on future tasks that are strewn about like Legos waiting for an unsuspecting barefoot walk through the room. (For those of you who have never lived with a Legomaniac, this is like stubbing your toe only it is the bottom of your foot.)

In Toastmasters contests, there is a minute of silence while the judges think about the just completed speech and write their notes before the next speech is introduced. Imagine how nice it would be in the office to have fifteen minutes to a half hour to at least start to flesh out thoughts and ideas that come out of meetings before your load in something completely new with the next meeting? It would be refreshing, yes?

I finally get the point of study hall in high school – I thought it was supposed to be social time (and I never was lucky enough to have any of my friends in the same study hall hour), sometimes doing a bit of work but mostly just pulling out a book and reading. Now I get that it was time for students to make a bit of sense, organized our thoughts around what we had learned that day. Make it our own, connect the dots. Prevent this clutter in our minds.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we got study hall time at work in between meetings? As for home, we are each on our own to manage that clutter in our minds. Share if you have a good method.