Any Regrets?

As life continues to tumble on, one phase fading into the next with barely enough time to notice that change has occurred I have a fantasy that I’ll someday have time to mull it all over, a chance to more fully experience what I’ve been too busy living to savor.

In addition to all I’ve sent up into the cloud, I have files and boxes of scribbled notes, photos, letters and cards … poems that shifted my way of looking at the world … and many, many notebooks in which I’ve recorded ideas, frustrations, solutions and my thoughts, happy and not so much, about how it’s all going.  I’ve published essays about different times and experiences in my life and what they meant or, at least, what I thought they meant at the time … and I’ve also written many more I’ve kept private, moments I’ve painted in words to be sure I never forget.

It’s something to look forward to, all the more so now that I’ve spent some time reading the wonderful “Life Reports” essays solicited and collected by the New York Times columnist David Brooks.  The summary is itself inspiring as a brief on what matters (and what doesn’t) but what a privilege I found it to peek, for a moment, into the memories of so many intelligent, thoughtful people.  Not a single one of their life stories unfolded exactly the way they envisioned them and the real beauty, I think, lies in how many of these men and women found life’s true rewards in doing the hardest work of all – taking risks, messing up, admitting their mistakes and honoring love.  The humility is gorgeous.  Finding grace in imperfection is just about as good as it gets.

Grand, Gorgeous … and What a Great Business Story

I am just back from Paris – I’d never been – and oui!, what everyone says is just so very true.  It’s an exquisitely beautiful, utterly enchanting place filled with energy and inspiration.  Everything looks, feels and tastes fabulous in Paris.  It’s easy to understand how the city has inspired so many masterpieces – literary, artistic, musical, cinematic, culinary, fashion … but I was surprised to find business inspiration there too, specifically at the Eiffel Tower.

I loved it, of course, but this landmark is so iconic it has become a cliché, so it feels sort of … gauche … to gush about it.  The fact that I’ve seen so many pictures, drawings, photos and models of the Eiffel Tower made it seem, in my mind, sort of ordinary when, in fact, it is anything but!  It’s grand and gorgeous and gargantuan … and, since I’m on a roll with words that begin with “g” I might as well note that it was ridiculed by Parisiennes who said it looked like a giraffe. 

A bit of history: The tower was created (designed, built and paid for) by the French engineer and bridge builder Alexandre Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Exposition (World’s Fair) of 1889 and it was, when built, the world’s tallest man-made structure.   Eiffel was young and, many thought, foolish – the officials awarded him the contract but only about a fourth of the funds he needed to build the tower.  He agreed to raise the funds privately in exchange for which he got to keep all the profits associated with the tower for the next 20 years … and he broke even after the very first year. 

That something lovely could be made from iron beams was an entirely new idea.   Eiffel not only built a thing of beauty, he pulled off a great public relations stunt that established his reputation (and ensured no one would ever forget the name of his company) and also made him a fortune.  All these years later, it’s still breathtaking … and if you climb the stairs as high as they go (as I did) that’s a superlative that takes on an entirely different meaning!

All My Excuses …

You know you want what you want – whatever it is, a flatter stomach or more money or a better job – but for some reason you’re stuck and you are not making it happen.  Why?

I am getting better at asking myself this question.  Just yesterday, in fact, I pushed myself to figure out why I was avoiding a not-giant business task and I did some mental digging around and realized the problem was that there was a small piece I didn’t understand how to do.  Ta-duh!  I called Michelle, my business partner, and confessed.  She knew the answer (she’s much smarter than I am in matters of technology) and it’s now done.

As Gilda Radner used to say, it’s always something … and the challenge is figuring out what it is.  I was thinking about this because I’ve noticed that even though I no longer go to an office from 9-5 there are still sooo many things I’m somehow not getting accomplished.  (I know – amazing, huh?)

Apart and aside from getting taller, most of the things I want or feel I need to do are not impossible.  So what’s stopping me?  Here is my list of the excuses I make to myself …

I want this – but I also want that!  When you hold two goals in direct opposition you live in constant frustration.  For instance, my pretty-but-small house is filled with stuff.  I want a serene, clutter-free environment but what about all my books?  The framed photos?  This bowl, that table … I’m distraught at the thought of throwing something that represents a part of my life away.  But really, what would happen if I toss it?  Which do I want more – it or a cool, serene home?  It’s that simple.

Someone should do it for me.  And, in fact, sometimes someone should – but if I’m not going to ask for it or don’t want the battle involved in getting it, I need to do it myself.

I’m in denial.  I once heard denial described as being “like a fluffy, pink blankie” because it gives you such an illusory feeling of security to not face the truth.  A shallow example — I wear a size six so no way am I overweight (but I’m only 5”3’ and the truth is, I need to lose 10 pounds).  Or – far, far harder – I didn’t want to “know” that my husband wasn’t really working till 10 or 11 at night because that would mean what it meant – that I couldn’t stay married to him.   Truth is not always convenient and it doesn’t usually fade away either.

I don’t understand it.  See above – not to mention my disorganized approach to financial planning.  I’m getting much better at challenging myself on this and, interestingly, I haven’t yet encountered anything I need to grasp that I can’t, if I just force myself to stay with it and ask a lot of questions.

I feel entitled.   I’ve been working so hard, it’s so difficult to be a single mom, I’m so tired … all excuses I have made to have a cookie, another glass of wine, to shop, to not sit down and pay my bills.

I’m sure I’m missing a few major reasons for stuckness here … and I’d love to know, what gets in your way or keeps you from doing something you really, really want?

Clarity Comes in the Morning

I’ve been listening to and watching the wind this morning.  I can hear it before I see it, a roar from the east and then I watch through the rain-spattered window to the right as the trees in my yard take the blow … a second or so later it’s received, less violently, by the ones I can see through the window on my left.  The windows on that side are clear, no rain — the back of my house is protected in this particular storm.

It’s my habit to sit quietly in bed with a mug of hot coffee … just being there.  My mind is open, clear.  It is a peaceful, meditative time of day that is vitally important to my well-being … it’s when I make decisions intuitively, far smarter ones than I’m able to make when the day has started and I’ve begun to have feelings, distractions, reactions — all of which take me away from who I really am and like to be.

This is the time of day when I have great clarity and insights come naturally, making the right course of action obvious … if not always easy.  Truth about certain struggles gets revealed.  I understand my life and relationships better.  It was early one weekday morning, coffee cradled in my hands, that I realized I needed to stop the damage my marriage was creating.  It was not one but many early morning ruminations that led me to know the time had come, finally, to step away from the safety and security of a good job to focus on other work and make my own way.  (Will keep you posted on whether or not that turns out to be a good decision!)

The writer Julia Cameron writes about this time of day in her wonderful  book on nurturing creativity, The Artist’s Way.  She advocates writing “morning pages” each day as a way to capture emotions and insights to identify the path that is correct for you.  Maybe because I write so much at other times of day, including (sporadically) in a journal at night, I don’t feel a need to document my thoughts … I just like to watch them and pick out the ones that seem important enough to act upon. I never actually made a decision to use this time of day as a guidepost — it happened organically.  I nursed four babies through many, many dawns, mundane and magical at the same time.  That’s how mornings feel to me still.

It seems natural that I now cherish this quiet time and I’ve learned to trust where it takes me, in my days and in my life.  I’m curious to hear about other habits and rituals you may have that lead you to better places in life …

Transcendent Moments — Life’s Sparkly Gifts

I’ve always been a dreamer, able to conjure up pictures of myself accomplishing some sort of goal or living the life I really want rather than the one I have at a given moment in time. Those images are useful in propelling me to take a step and another one and another one yet along the way to where I want to go, whether it was to write a book or run a marathon or, even, raise my family.  Imagining myself doing things I want to do is, I guess, my way to cope with boredom or frustration and apparently it works for me because my life has been sprinkled with some incredible experiences and beautiful moments.

It’s interesting that I’m so goal-driven though, because when I look back it’s not accomplishing these things that resonates for me.  That I’ve arrived at a place I’ve so vigorously imagined doesn’t matter all that much.  My joy comes from looking back at the transcendent moments that are like sparkles in my life, the ones where I realize I am living exactly the right life for me.  Here are a few of them:

… I’m sitting in a small, silent room at the library where I’ve been writing my first book (The Over-Scheduled Child, co-authored with Alvin Rosenfeld, MD).   I notice that hours have passed and I’ve written pages and pages of really excellent sentences, with deeply insightful observations and metaphors and similes that work well and the prose is intelligent and interesting.  I have no memory of the effort and thinking that went into producing it!  The words flowed from  me, somehow, as though I hadn’t even been there and I knew, right then, that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing in my life.

… I’ve arrived at the top of a tall hill that marks the end of the 15th mile of my 17-mile training run.  It is a couple of weeks before the marathon I am training for, which I will run in San Diego.  I’ve been running in the early mornings all winter, pushing myself further and further according to a schedule I’ve carefully worked out, recording the distance of each run, interspersing short runs (she says, fully aware that nine years later even those so-called “short” distances seem an impossibility …) with longer and yet longer ones.  It’s late morning on a warm, spring day.  I hear birds chirping and lawn mowers and buzzing hedge-clippers of landscapers working on the lovely lawns of the neighborhood where I’m running.  My body feels like a machine, it knows what to do and I have energy to spare.  I know, at this moment, that I will finish today’s run and the marathon too.  I burst into tears from the sheer joy of realizing that I can and will do this impossible thing — run 26.2 miles — just because I had decided to do so.

… Sunday afternoon, this past weekend.  I am driving into New York to see my daughter Devin, who I don’t see often enough, given her busy schedule and mine.  My other three kids are asleep at home. I’ll be back in time to attend a two-hour yoga workshop with John in the early evening.  There are all manner of other, more productive things I arguably should be doing (like cleaning my house or writing this blog or working on a new business proposal I need to create).  Instead I opted to pop into Manhattan for brunch with Devin and her boyfriend because I can and it’s what I want to do.  I don’t need to be at the office at 9 am on Monday and nothing will happen if my kitchen floor doesn’t  get mopped for another day or two — I’m now in charge of my time and I get to spend it as I choose.

These years have been filled with hard work, days and nights, and I’ve had lots and lots of priorities that kept bumping into one another — my family, financial needs, my relationship, my own hopes and dreams and so on and on and on.  It’s been incredibly difficult to keep everything on an even keel but I kept pushing on with this vision of what my life could be like if I could only get it to … here.

I did.  There’s lots more to do — right now, in fact, I need to shower and get on with my day and I will, in just a minute — but I just wanted to mark that brief moment on Sunday afternoon when I felt wealthy and successful as anyone could ever be — just because I have time and I’m in charge of it.

Me and Everyone Else, Huh?

So … spring is finally ringing the doorbell and I am really and truly now officially and 100% self-employed and John and I went out and did some really fun things yesterday and I’ve gotten some good rest and had a long, great, vigorous walk up the most challenging hills the city of Stamford has to offer this morning.

Yet  what a winter it has been and I am not getting a paycheck anymore and my parenting ride has been bumpier than it usually is and I cannot believe how sick I was with a sinus infection on Thursay and Friday.  So sick that I had to call in sick for my last day of work and started to cry when I was telling doctor how truly awful I felt (as though he couldn’t see that for himself, given my 102-degree fever and the fact that I was so weak I curled into a ball on the examining table while I waited for him to come in).

Two ways of describing my here and now and, it occurs to me, this is exactly what is meant by the “glass half full or half empty” paradigm.  It’s the same story but it comes out very differently depending on which way I tell it.

But, of course, it is a whole lot easier to feel good about life when I am healthy and my finances are under control and everyone I love is doing well and I am able to fill my soul with the things that make me feel creative, productive, calm and centered. 

That’s as good an argument as I have ever come up with for taking good care of myself in every way.  I’ve always hated admitting that anything in life that I think or feel or focus my energies on is not unique to me … but this is not unique to me.  I’m 52.  This is what life looks like for women my age and, I’m horrified to admit, it’s why I get all those mail order catalogs filled with soft, comfortable clothing and pretty jewelry and inspirational trinkets and posters reminding us to “live, love, laugh” and so on.  Me and everyone else, huh?

My Life & Files

When life feels burdensome, we’re supposed to ask ourselves “if I had just a month (or a day or a year or a week) left to live, what would I do differently?”  Honestly I can answer that there’s not much I would change, all things considered.  By which I mean I’m satisfied that I’m using my currency on things that matter, not frittering it away watching American Idol or rearranging the socks in my drawer.  My life is busy and juicy and I’m pretty sure that everyone I love knows and feels my commitment.  Yeah, I’d like to spend more time soaking up sunshine on a beach, traveling the world and reading great books … but I have children, a man, parents, siblings, friends, bills, colleagues, clients and all must be tended to as meaningful parts of a full life.

But I also have a huge (growing) collection of notes, articles, photos, poems, letters and other pieces of my life that I want to return to and spend more time thinking about, learning from and enjoying – including the stories and artwork of four children, journals I have kept at different times in my life and other things I have stumbled upon in my readings that I know have more enrichment to offer.  I was chatting about this with a friend the other day and the conversation went around to whether or not it would be satisfying and worthwhile to scan it all for future contemplation and whether doing so would free me to toss it all in the trash. 

An article I read in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago raised some provocative questions along those lines.  It showcased some blogs dedicated to sharing online collections of stuff (spoons, artwork) and it asked whether seeing (or posting) those can satisfy the desire to own things.   (Hmmm … don’t think so.  A picture of closet filled with beautiful clothes vs. a shopping trip to fill one?  Uh, nope.)

On the other hand, if I were to take the time to go through my things … read them … consider how and where they should be filed … scan them … organize my computer files … and float the whole thing up to the cloud to be safely stored till I’m ready to play with it again … yes, I think I might be able to detach from the physical form of it all.  (Okay most of it.)

The process of handling it, thinking about it and feeling the things I felt once again – with the benefit of some context – would make it easier to let it all go.  I asked my friend Valerie (see previous blog) whether she finds it comforting to have images of her house, including (in her case) lots of “before” and “after” pictures – she said it does, that they remind her of their vision for the house, all the work that went into it and what they were able to accomplish.

Which, I guess, is why it’s called “processing …”