A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

Things are supposed to just work the way they are supposed to. There aren’t supposed to be surprises when making tomato sauce or bread. I always hope there aren’t surprises when installing new soft ware on my computer. I understand that’s a pipe dream… Nevertheless, a body can dream, can’t she?

Accidents are unexpected, by definition. On the road, the accidents that require police intervention are not so good. But when an accident in the kitchen yields a great taste, well, that’s good.

But I think there’s something about the difference between dependable and expected. They closed Grey’s Anatomy episode, Great Expectations with this thought:

You gotta wonder why we cling to our expectations
The expectation is just what keeps us steady, standing still,
the expected is just the beginning
the unexpected is what changes our lives.

Maybe it’s that unexpected whatever that starts the ball of change rolling?

– kerch and leslie

PS. We’re currently finding that if you try to listen to this using the player in this window, we sound like chipmunks. If you click on the Audio mp3 icon (also called a chicklet) you hear us like we really sound.

 

 Tomato Sauce, Bread and Dependability: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Click on this link to an article in today’s Telegraph about The Big Ballet. What is The Big Ballet? “…a unique Russian dance troupe (average weight 20 stone)”

Yes, there are pictures. Yes, you will envy these women who “aim to show that grace, nimbleness and femininity are not the preserve of stick-thin ballerinas.”

I love them!

A couple of the women who we e’mailed yesterday about this site have asked if they can track their own progress in various areas on this site.  Here’s how:  make your entry as a new Comment to this post on the topic and schedule of your choosing.  Just remember, it will live on the Internet for the world to see!

I’ll start:  Weight change was not a particular goal for me this year, but getting (and staying) Healthier IS a particular goal for me.  I track my weight weekly, so I can tell you that for the past 3 weeks, I have been stable.  No change up or down.  I’ll take that!

I must report that in my travels through my neighborhood on foot today, I saw blooming crocuses.  Croci?  3 of them, and they were brilliant yellow through the snow. 

This causes me to note the progress of the year through winter and now headed toward spring and to relate that to my own “progress against goal.”  I feel like I’ve made some progress, despite my continued failure at quitting smoking.  A number of my health-related “to do’s” are now “done” and I’m closing in on the last few. 

My vainglorious return to the gym now feels like habituated behaviour and my eating is under control (which means that my weight is not going up and - some weeks - actually goes down a little).  Still, both eating and exercise are battles that are never really won and done, are they?  Always a work in progress, I guess.

Sometimes I get all stuck in my own problems. I guess everyone does from time to time. I worry that I’m not doing, or completing, the tasks I’ve set for myself. I’m wasting time or resources or something. That kind of thinking spirals me down into that nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel position that, even as the old joke goes, makes it impossible to actually work.

So sometimes I know there is value it standing up straight, looking around and reflecting on where I’m really headed.

For me it has to be about more than just Leslie’s Job 1. When someone gives me directions to a new place, first I want to know the address. I must know where I’m headed before I can begin to process the directions from here to there.

I also have to believe there is some value at the destination otherwise it’s easy to put it off and put it off, never starting and certainly never getting there.

So, I’m working to get clear on my destination. What do I want? Because I know that then, and only then, can I figure out how to get it.

Geez, I hope this is progress.

Well, I’ve started on the “body work”. 

Bone density scan - done.  All ok.

Abdominal ultrasound - done.  All ok.  I do not appear to be apt to “go” from the same hereditary malady that killed my father.

Gym - back on track.  At least for now.  I try to go every day and I won’t go with more than one day “off”.  And on the off day - like yesterday - I seriously walked.

Cardiologist follow-up appointment - done.  With an EKG classified as “norma”. Normally not a word I enjoy, but I’ll take “normal” to describe my EKG.

Blood work to determine exactly how elevated my cholesterol is and the dreaded colonoscopy to go!

And look below - I’ve figured out how to put my signature in!

Leslie sent me a note yesterday suggesting I check out this book: A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder–How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

Actually, I wrote about the project here when there was something about the project in the NYT in December of last year. I don’t think the book was available then. But maybe I just didn’t look for it. Anyway…

Leslie sent me a link to the book at Amazon. OOOH, the temptation to BUY something new that most certainly will fix all my problems. (NOT!)  But that same evaluation of year end expenses that I talked about yesterday shows me just how much I did spend on random stuff I didn’t really need. I gotta get that under control.

So I thank Benjamin Franklin for invention the public library. And I thank the Baltimore County Library System for having the greatest online system for finding books in their system. I know they HAVE the book in stock and I know it’s checked out. So I’ll wait until it comes back (the due date is also public) and then I’ll go get it.

Thanks for your continuing poke at me to keep working on this project. I guess, in the end, that’s what friends are for!

You know the old story about the spider asking the centipede which foot comes first?… and then the poor creature with too many feet just couldn’t figure out how to move at all.

That’s kinda what I feel like.

There are so many things I could be doing — things I should be doing. But instead, I just fritter away time not deciding. There’s a piece of me that thinks it’s all about the lack of structure. You know … If I just had the right big sign to remind me, or if I could just commit to the change I want to make, then I could get on with doing the great things I think I can do.

Yesterday, Leslie and I were talking about my lack of structure. You know, when you work for yourself alone at home it’s hard to make any kind of structure work. Sure when clients come, then I’m all about that. I have no trouble doing the things I’ve committed to others. But when it comes to my own stuff, it’s so easy to imagine something else is more important.

Ok, so if I don’t want this to turn into a pity party, I have to say something useful.

I noticed a post by fellow Carol Ross over at Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living, She referenced an article posted in American Family Physician
regarding the stages of change. They note:

Behavior change is rarely a discrete, single event; the patient moves gradually from being uninterested (precontemplation stage) to considering a change (contemplation stage) to deciding and preparing to make a change.

I have to get past the uninterested part where I don’t really care to be bothered to change and then through the ambivalence of deciding which for me absolutely is caused by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things. And when I’ve done those, then maybe I’ll be ready to prepare to change.

Change is a process. I’m stuck right now between several projects.

Maybe I should try to pay attention to my daily money manager who helped me clean up my end of year finances. She suggested I get clear about what I DO want so I can stop being distracted by all the shiny little things that I COULD do if I just decided any one of them was “the” one.

Oh well. Right now I’m stuck in that place.

I appreciate Leslie’s post about the hipster PDA thing. But for now, I can’t decide what to put in it!

Kerch -

A tip o’the hat to Merlin for this:

Beauty & Simplicity

The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and “beaming,” and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain. Let’s make one together.

Building your first Hipster PDA

1. get a bunch of 3″x5″ file cards (here’s 500 for around 3 bucks)
2. clip them together with a binder clip
3. there is no step 3

Settings & Preferences

For you hotrods who like to tweak your equipment, I’ll note a few mods you might make to the basic configuration.

• Consider picking up some different kinds of cards—different colors, lined and unlined.
• Personally, I like the really small binder clips and a stack of 12 or fewer cards; experiment for the combination that suits you
• Try using a single different-colored card as a visual separator between used and fresh cards in your stack (helps you from accidentally giving someone an old, written-on note)
• Buy yourself a Fisher Space Pen. I’ll post more on this later (since I’m a bit obsessed with them), but The Fisher Bullet model is tiny, sturdy, and surprisingly comfortable to use. And, thanks to its famous nitrogen-forced ink well technology, the Space Pen writes upside down, underwater, and—yes I’ve tested it— through a pat of rich, creamery butter. It’s the perfect stylus for your new Hipster PDA.

Point and click your way to his blog - it will change your life!

http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda/

…and can one really teach an old dog new tricks?  Kerch has been trying to get me to learn how to actually insert my own signature into these posts.  Several e-mails have been involved.  For reasons that are not clear to me, I am unable to do this.  This is especially perplexing because I really am generally OK with computer skills.  Her latest e-mail to me on this topic says:

 ”i just uploaded your signature into a place so you can see it when you are writting in the blog..
there’s a tab.. view all.
and then click on something.. see what happens.”

 To which I can only say….What tab?

Kerch is Very Good at this.  She even writes code!

What do you do when stumbling over something that is so obvious to someone else, and then you feel so incredibly stupid when you can’t do it?

This happened to me when I tried to learn to knit.  Decades ago, my mother tried to teach me.  “How To” articles from Woman’s Day/Family Circle magazines were also involved.  Still, I never learned to knit.  Crocheting, on the other hand, was something that I could always do - and I still do.  But I gave up attempting to knit 35 years ago.

About 5 years ago, I took a pottery class.  I had always wanted to be able to work on a potters wheel and make my own pottery.  I tried - I really did.  Like knitting, I have no aptitude or affinity for making pottery.  None.

I really do know how to do a lot of things, and I have been generally successful in learning new skills.  Still, the failures are always “front of mind”, aren’t they?

The failures make better stories.

What’s next to conquer? Change requires risk-taking, and a willingness to fail, to look foolish if necessary.  To be covered in potter’s dust and have no bowl to show for it.

(If you see my actual signature here, it’s because Kerch put it here. Thanks!)