It’s late. I’m tired. Let’s over-share for a moment.
Well, it’s nearly eleven at night on a Tuesday night. I was out sick all day today, and part of yesterday, and one of the side effects of sleeping intermittently for the better part of two days is that you find yourself up with nothing to do at odd hours. The Mini Sith Princess is blessedly asleep, and the boys are off to the airport to pick up Chris’ mom, who’s in visiting this week. So since I’m no longer babysitting the porcelain bassinet, I figured I’d write.
It’s been a crazy few months. At work, I moved departments rather suddenly and found myself trying to learn a lot of new stuff really fast. I also launched a new blog, and lost my old web host, and somewhere in the tussle, this blog got a little lost. Part of the web host crazyness meant that I spent a few weeks tying up all the remaining loose ends for coffee cup studio, which officially is no more. Oh, and a project I worked on last year won a Gold ADDY Award at the Louies, making me officially “an award-winning copywriter.” Yeah, I totally rocked the long red formal at the awards ceremony, but fortunately there were no acceptance speeches. Or cameras pointed my way.
At home, things have been a little freaky for other reasons. Mostly, it’s been freaky because it’s been so remarkably drama-free. We’re managing to stay on top of the basics and are starting give Junior Cheeseburger some much-needed and too-long-put-off attention and focus. (By the way, he completely ROCKED his last elementary school talent show. He did Queen’s We Will Rock You, and had the whole gym stomping and clapping.)
Oh my, the times they are a’changin’ aren’t they? Read more
I’m for you.
This is a very belated post in response to a conversation among the Hob Knobbers several months ago. I was in the midst of some relational conflict over some longstanding issues, and working through the book Who’s Pushing Your Buttons? by John Townsend (of the Cloud/Townsend Boundaries books). It was a really challenging book, because it presents two Truths that are the antidote to two corresponding Lies that keep you from seeing beneficial and lasting change in relationships.
The first lie is that you can change someone else, and the second lie is that people don’t change. Like all the most effective lies, they’re not so much absolute lies as they are misdirection and half-truth. Read more
The final solution to your crappy short term memory
…is to stop trying to remember stuff.
Yup, its time for another one of those “remedial GTD” posts. I signed up for Jott towards the end of last year with the intent to use it and Sandy to help me build my “trusted system.”
The “trusted system,” for those not familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done organizational system, is basically where you put your “stuff,” rather than trying to remember it all.
“Stuff” equates to all the random data that are hogging all your mental RAM: appointments, to-dos, plans, schemes, ideas and such like. Read more
Getting dirty and digging around
It’s been a bit of a down day. For one thing, it’s been rainy all day–that kind of drizzly, half-hearted rain where you wish the clouds would make up their minds and either just clear up or really let loose and freshen things up. I feel a bit half-hearted myself today.
Complaints about the airlines aside, last week’s trip out of town was really beneficial to me. Aside from the boost of confidence I got in presenting fairly well, the copious amounts of “down time” waiting for the travel glitches to work themselves out gave me a nice break in which to do some reflection, private journaling and just get nicely refocused and mentally refreshed. Sans someone asking me a question or needing something urgently for a few days, it was much easier to look at my life from a longer view and get a little clarity. Maybe even some perspective.
I’ve been paying attention to my dreams lately, as well as some of the recurring imagery around me. Lots of earthy stuff: digging in dirt, sinking my toes in sand, mud coating everything. Everything is very active, energetic, but it’s not a frenetic, airy, flighty kind of energy. It’s the energy of a farmer steadily working the same small plot of ground over time.
I’ve been feeling an urge to start a garden, but I don’t know if that desire is literal or metaphorical or both. I’m not sure if I want to actually put my time, attention and energy into a garden, or if it just means that I’m coming into a season of tending, nurturing, and growing things, rather than starting 100 new projects.
That’s weird for me, because in general I naturally tend to be a “starter of new things” and a “finisher of stuff left unfinished,” but being a “tender of things in-process” is a way of seeing myself I have a hard time with.
Communicating the impossible
I am officially a professional communicator. I’m one of the most interconnected, reachable people I know. If I want to communicate with someone, I have a wide selection of tools to choose from, and the essence of my job is finding the right words.
And yet, three times in the last couple of weeks, I have found myself presented with a situation that has left me completely at a loss as to what to say, and how to say it.
What do you say, and how do you say it, when you find out someone you care about is terminally ill?
Or when a friend’s loved one passes on?
How on earth do you condense and translate the culmination of the six most tumultuous, enriching, incredible years of your life into “a concise testimony”?
Unfortunately, I am not prepared to deal with these situations.
I have tried to convey love and support in the first two situations, and essentially deferred to a later date on the last one.
We don’t live in a world of “dropping by” anymore. And cell phones, email and other means of communication seem too sterile for some communication. Tears, and hugs, and knowing silences don’t translate well into these new forms.
I will do my best, and hope that the people to whom I need to express sympathy, affection and care are willing and able to accept what I’m able to give, and that it blesses them in some way regardless.
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