Why We Keep

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

So maybe you don’t keep. Maybe you shed things like water off a duck’s back. Maybe you don’t find anything slightly fascinating about junk mail. Maybe you think you don’t need old receipts and stuffed animals and clothes and paystubs and cassette tapes.

Maybe. 

But maybe you keep. Why?

Security. Possibility. Dreaming. Laziness. Avoiding. Fear.   Yes?   No?

Something in me tells me I must keep things. That other part, the part that heard you say things are so cluttered, tries to get the keepy part to stop but it hasn’t worked for years and years so why would it work now? So I am wondering: if I got rid of it all, if I lost it all, would I do it all again? Would I build up just the same amount of extra stuff so I feel the same amount of safe and secure and backed up and un-tidied? Is this my comfort level?

1) I grew up in  a cluttered home. Not a big surprise if this feels somewhat comfortable.

2) I dislike cleaning in general. I feel that as a priority it goes on the list well below interesting pursuits like lovers and Yahoo! Answers and making sock puppets. There are some serious reasons for this, such as people I knew who put a priority on cleanliness while screwing up the rest of their lives. Not my family, of course. I just picked this up as I got to know other families with clean houses. I learned to be suspicious of the clean.

3) I think I have some kind of fear of doing the wrong thing, and I will err on the side of doing nothing (i.e. keeping) rather than discarding or destroying. Until I decide that I am for sure right about getting rid of a thing, it is more likely to get sorted into a box or a pile or a file.

4) I really really really don’t like being poor. This is somehow stupidly linked to the keeping thing subconsciously, but in most cases the items in question actually aren’t worth anything to anyone else.

5) Something I’ve learned lately, some kind of side-effect of being childless: I want someone to discover me. To get to know me. And that might be through my things, my papers, my cluttery stuff. Sure, it could be through something like a blog or a novel (and I’m working on that again, by the way), but somehow I think that things are important this way. Like when I learned things about my father and grandparents by going through their things when they died. Yep, this is my death plan. No kids. Gotta leave something.

This leads me to ask: what if I list it all on a blog, what if I make a Wiki of Letting Go and document it all for anyone who might care? Which leads to: what if nobody cares? Which reminds me: there isn’t anyone reading this. But I wonder if it would work. I wonder if I should do like those other people did and auction it all off on eBay or something. Too late to get famous doing it.

But maybe someone would know me a little. Maybe they would keep me.

Posted in Motivation, Procrastination, Saving Things | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Now Where Did I Put That List of Goals?

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

I would like to say I’ve been so busy fixing, making, moving and changing that I haven’t had time to add posts to this blog…

Not to say I haven’t done anything. There has been change: a new diet and 15 pounds gone. There has been fixing: a new garage door lock, a drawer not sticking any more. There has been making: more cooking at home, a seat cushion for his truck. There has been moving: a new home, decisions about what stays and goes.

So I can pretend that’s been enough to neglect my diatribe on motivation.

The problem is that I’ve neglected some things, those very same things that have been neglected all along. Life is moving forward and keeping me busy, but I am constantly losing sight of my goals.

Why?

1) I feel alone. I do not have the support I need, and I discount the support I get. Ugh, I hate admitting that but I think it might be true.

2) I feel overwhelmed. There is so much to do, so much I want to do, and I feel like I must do it all exactly the right way. It’s a bit intimidating.

3) I have too many goals. The ones where the goal is to do nothing make it hard to do the ones that require effort.

Why would you have a goal to do nothing? you ask. Because I need to relax. Because I carry tension in my body and I have a thousand thoughts in my head. So we have a do-nothing goal, and this is a strong motivating force. 🙂 Unfortunately. And as I write it, it sounds sillier than ever. Come on, fess up – you want to do nothing, too, don’t you?

So today, right now, I feel like what I need is something to help me remember my priorities. Something to make me actually plan based on them. Something to kick start my progress toward my goals. Hmmm… maybe I should start a blog or something.

Or maybe I should get some readers who actually respond to what I write. The spam comments just aren’t inspiring me. I wonder what would happen if I Tweeted this blog?

I wish there was a tool like the financial ones for prioritizing non-financial goals. You know the ones: you put in all of your balances and interest rates and the payments you make and it tells you how to get them all paid off in this nice efficient plan. We just need one where you put in your goals and your interest level and the trade-offs you make and it tells you how to do everything that matters to you that won’t kill you or put you in the poorhouse. (Those are my criteria – someone else may be okay with those options.)

Instead of a payoff plan, we’ll have a <insert clever phrase here> plan.

I’m just going to go get started on that one. It’s my new goal. Now what were the other ones I was worried about?

Posted in Goals, Procrastination | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Not Doing

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

Here’s what I was into for the last two weeks: learning about how people are affected by and distracted by our electronic gadgets.

Here is what I am doing: being distracted by TV and not doing anything else. The first movie was a much better excuse: Up in the Air, one of my favorites. Since then, a mix of things that I have no particular loyalty to, just useless stuff. Fascinating, isn’t it?

I have been doing some email checking and Facebooking, and of course deleting the spam comments that show up regularly here. The first couple of times there was a comment, I got all worked up and excited, but now I am cynical and assume they will be badly worded, unrelated, and merely existing to put spammy links on blog sites. I have not been surprised with any real comments yet.

I mentally set myself a deadline to do something by a certain time. Then I mentally made up excuses to wait a little longer. Then I just ignored it and told myself it didn’t matter. Then I mentally felt kinda bad but didn’t do anything about it. Now I am doing something entirely not that thing.

I tried to set up a little motivation with a challenge created on a website – something reasonable and requiring some effort for me. The challenge got blown away by someone who completed the goal all at once, who shouldn’t have bothered with my wimpy old challenge. If you do this, stop it! Let people have their little goals and little motivations without stomping all over them.

Turning off the TV. It’s difficult – the remote is not within reach. There is a cowboy yelling at a kid who hid the money… I really really don’t need this.

Time is flying by. I am being left behind. I am moving slowly. Very. Slowly. I try to think of what will make my life easier, but I have a hard time because it seems that easy is not doing those things. Maybe I’m just too warm and I need to turn on the cooler.

I know this has been thrilling to read about. My doing nothing. Does it make you feel better?

Now, without the TV, I am almost sufficiently bothered by my lack of effort. Some part of me wants to be moving, and fixing, and changing, and making. I just might let it.

Posted in Motivation, Procrastination | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Got an idea?

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

 So I got this idea one day. I was going to make a shower curtain. It was going to be a gift for someone, so I had a deadline. Remember how I said that deadlines helped?

The theme was going to be mining. I looked up pictures of miners and mines and chose one. I got a shower curtain liner. I got paints. I planned to set it up on my sliding glass doors for my deck. And I got started.

Nobody told me to do it. Nobody showed me how.  I just convinced myself it would be cool and it would work. I had never painted something that large.

I did take some pictures along the way, noticing that there was a big difference in color when the light was coming from outside.

I would work on one color at a time, letting it dry in between. Slow and steady, over a couple of weeks, it came together and started looking like the mine it was supposed to be.

I remember struggling with a rope, not sure how to paint it so it would look somewhat realistic. And the tracks were just pathetic for a while. I was learning while I was doing it, and I liked the challenge.

The finished curtain.

But why? Why did I try to do this thing? Why did I think I could do it? I had an idea, that’s all. It could have stayed an idea.

Nobody would have noticed if I didn’t finish. Nobody would have cared.

And I don’t even know if they are still using the curtain, or if it grew mildewy and was thrown in the trash. All I have is the story and the pictures. But maybe that is enough. Maybe that is why I try.

Posted in Motivation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

You CON Do It!

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

Every time I leave the con, I feel like I can write again. I’m inspired and motivated, encouraged by those who have succeeded.

The con, for those of you who can’t make sense of it, is CONduit. For me, this year. In past years, it has been Bubonicon, Torcon, Marcon… These are science fiction conventions. Most of them are SF&F, science fiction and fantasy.

They are portrayed in the media as gatherings of weirdos in costume, as places where badly-dressed people meet. The local papers send someone out to do an interview – they don’t get a membership, they just talk to one person, and it never portrays the beauty of the con.

The essence of the con is the mingling of many viewpoints, the sharing and learning that goes on. You might think it is all about parading around looking like someone else, but when you enter a panel, all that is left behind.

Sure, you might have to move to see around a set of wings, but now you are in with your people: smart, curious, opinionated, and brave. You listen to your favorite authors read their work and share their experiences, you can ask questions of an editor or publisher, you might learn about or play with a new technology. It is almost never boring. These are people who know how to be creative, to appreciate it in others, who have a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd.  

And everyone there is at least a little brave. Even those who don’t dress up or get up in front of an audience – we are brave because we are there, at a science fiction convention. People will give us funny looks when we tell them where we are going. We might end up alone there because nobody else in our family gets it. Although, to be sure, there are whole families who attend together and that is more the rule than the exception. Because once you go, you get hooked, and there is pretty much something for everyone.

Those costumes aren’t just bought off the rack: they are hand-made, often one-of-a-kind creations that win prizes at different levels in costuming contests. There is some serious artistry going on, and some incredible respect earned by those who put in the time and effort. And as a member, you can see them up close, admire the work.

There are artists of another kind, the ones that make more traditional art: paintings, sculptures, drawings. Their work is published as book covers, graphic novels, figurines used in role-playing games, etc. You can meet them and learn how they do what they do.

I learned how to make a mini folded choose-your-own-adventure. I drew a costume design from pattern books. I sat in on a group role-playing game and sang songs during the breaks. I looked through night-vision goggles. I learned about the 8 character archetypes, running a successful writing group, what makes suspense work, and how you can publish and promote your own e-book. I tried but didn’t come up with a three-sentence story I liked enough to submit to the contest. I learned why someone might think that romance with a vampire would be sexy. I started writing a puppet story. I learned that a character in one of my stories might be overstepping class boundaries. I went to a reading by an author who is in grad school and heard something I wanted to read, but there aren’t any plans to publish it yet.

It’s inspiring.

It makes you hope that some day you can make a living doing what you love.

And it makes me smile.

It’s been a couple of weeks, and I needed this reminder. So easy to get caught up in the routine and forget the puppet story. 🙂 Time to play…

Posted in Motivation, Science Fiction, Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Why Not Procrastinate?

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

So I’m really not feeling this. I’m holding back, I’m not really using my real voice. Why? I don’t know. It’s like the idea isn’t coming across the way I had intended.

Here’s a real truth: I am a great procrastinator.

I’ve been good at it as long as I can remember. I don’t shirk my duties, I just postpone them until the very last minute. That is when I find my motivation.

Deadlines are my friend. Write a novel in 30 days? Sure. Edit it and prepare it for publishing when nobody is waiting for it? Give me a few years. Clean the house just to keep it nice? Forget it. Clean it because someone is coming over in an hour? You’ve got it.

Is it shameful? Why haven’t I admitted it before? Why isn’t it a good thing to put on your resume? Okay, I have to say that I just thought of something: I don’t want someone else procrastinating and then handing a project to me without enough time to do it properly. That’s probably not high on the list of desirable skills.

At work, I’m not the same. I like what I’m doing, so I’m not putting it off. I know what needs to be done, so I do it. Somebody needs it done. They are relying on me. They are expecting me to do it. I need someone to expect something of me. It helps.

I’ve always been good at doing what is expected. That is why I did so well in school, it was all about expectations. They told us what we needed to study, when we were going to be tested on it, and I had everything I needed. Oh, I wasn’t perfect, I didn’t get it all right, but I did quite well. Give me a multipe choice test and I’ll do fine, because I will have studied enough to make a good guess.

The other end of the spectrum, where there are no expectations, is my other forte. Fiction is my haven. Nobody expects me to write anything, so I can write whatever comes to me.

I think that I have muffled my voice here by imagining that I might be expected to do this in a certain way. I felt like it needed to be organized and I needed to stay on topic. I turned it into an academic essay with unclear expectations, my worst enemy.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. Time to let it go. Time to lighten up. Nobody out there is reading this anyway. No expectations.

Procrastination is a talent.

Posted in Motivation, Procrastination | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Are You Distracted?

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

Wow, time flies. I forgot how much I could like going to work and getting into debugging on a tough problem without all the distractions.

What’s interesting is that the things I thought I would miss (daylight, large monitors) are not nearly as important when I have this ability to concentrate. I didn’t even know how much I needed it.

Which brings us to yet another factor that motivates us: what we need to do our best. When circumstances led to an environment in which I couldn’t concentrate, I focused on something I had some control over: where I sat relative to the windows.  I then became convinced that this was a very important part of my happiness at work. When I was looking for a new job, I thought this was something to consider.

Now that I have what I really needed, I can see what happened. But how long would I have gone on thinking that it was about windows?

Here is the thing: we get distracted. Sometimes literally, with interruptions and noises and discomfort. Sometimes by ideas that are off-base, by thinking that we need something that doesn’t really get us to where we need to be.  And 99% of the time, we’re left to figure it out on our own. Nobody is there to tell us we’re off track.

This is why I would love to have a mentor. It’s my big dream, you know, to have someone to ask about job stuff. How do I get a job with an office? What should I be learning? How do I get to do what so-and-so does? Maybe I’m the only one who feels like I’m out there on my own. Maybe not. Maybe I just haven’t been in the right place at the right time.

In the meantime, we can try. We can try to think about what we really need to do our best. We can try to ask for it, create it, invent it – whatever it takes. We can try to help ourselves. We can try to find the right path for who we are.

Posted in Motivation | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Relief and Renewal

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

So the job search journey comes to an end… no, a pause. Because I don’t believe there are any ends in life, just times when you can stop and breathe for a bit.

I got a job offer. Actually, I got two this week. The first was from a place that would have been interesting, but the second was from the place I reallly wanted to work. The one where I came away from the interview feeling like I had met “my people” – people who think like me, I guess. I just felt comfortable with them.

It’s  always a little scary to start a new thing, but there is much relief in having this chance to breathe again. And having a chance to start anew and decide how I want to approach things.

I know that sometimes there can be great demotivators in place at work: non-existent reward systems, unclear goals, unreasonable demands. I believe I was once expected to read my boss’s mind… With this blog, I hope to help people who are navigating those troubled waters and show them the floaty toys that will keep them bobbing along.

I feel like this will be a chance to be motivated again, to feel creative and excited. I might even try some new things. I know nobody is reading this blog, but if you do some day, I would like to know what kinds of things you thought you might be able to do in your job when it was new, and how many of those things you have been able to accomplish.

I want to find my good-to-great path. Good to Great is a book by Jim Collins – take a look if you get a chance. It’s an interesting look at the differences between companies that do okay and the ones that really hit the jackpot, financially and managerially. I think a lot of it can apply at a personal level as well.

Most of us manage to have good-enough lives, through occassional successes at love, work, and play. But some people seem to have that extra bit of luck, or passion, that makes what they do into something great, something extraordinary. I want to find that extra something that works for me.

Posted in Goals, Motivation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Disassembler for Hire

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

Last spring, I got involved with a group that was reading and discussing The Artist’s Way, a book by Julia Cameron. We would read a chapter a week, do the exercises, and talk about our reactions.

The book walks you through a process that will reveal and help you work through the thoughts or feelings that might keep you from practicing your art. At the time I started, I was getting caught up in family problems and feeling like I was spending all my free time trying to figure out how to help the kids.

Although there were many things that I liked about the book, one of my favorites was the artist dates. An artist date is just something you do for your inner artist – a trip to a museum or a store, a walk in the park.

What I liked about them was that there was no obligation to do anything with what you learned or saw on an artist date, but it felt good to just commit to doing something for myself. For my inner curious playful self, not the outer self that needed to accomplish things and fix things. Honestly, if I could  do artist dates every day, I would be happy.

One of the other things that I found enlightening during the process was imagining myself leading other lives. This exercise was just a quick, don’t-think-about-it kind of  thing that led to some interesting answers. The only criteria is that these lives would be fun.

I came back to these after being laid off, in case there was some clue about a new direction I should take. This is what I found:

Songwriter (Yes, I have written songs)
Children’s book author (Yes, I have made a book for a kid)
Happiness motivator (Not sure how to make them pay for it…)
Body builder athlete (A nice dream)
Tin/paper sculptor (I have some paper art in the other room…)
Museum-goer tourist book writer (Oh, how I love obscure museums!) 
Disassembler (What exactly is that? I made it up)
Portrait photographer (Because the landscape doesn’t cough up cash)
Eclipse chaser (Cruises, flights, whatever it takes)
Wii reviewer (The old paid-to-play theme)
Girl encourager (Because they need it)

Is it important that I never came close to what I am doing for a living now? (Rather, what I am interviewing to do for a living?) I don’t want to think about it now (I need to prepare for that second interview tomorrow and believe that I am doing the right thing), but I know that these are the things that will find me again. Because they make me smile.

While I was going through the book, I started working on an Android application that I haven’t finished yet. Kid drama escalated. Husband got injured. Life happens.

Do you need anything disassembled? I have tools and I’m here to help.

Posted in Goals | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Brain Has Reasons

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Brave Thoughts

So as I mulled over the reasons for doing x and not y, I started to use a program that I had installed a while ago, called Personal Brain.

This is a mind-mapping tool that lets you build a network of interconnected thoughts. I started using this to map my motivations for doing things.

I started by listing the things I was doing regularly: chores, cooking, exercise, visiting certain websites, programming projects, reading, shopping, calling people, paying bills, etc. Not too exciting, but even among these, there were things I would do without thinking and other things that took a lot more effort, things that caused me to lose track of time and ones that I could only get myself to do by setting a timer.

When I had my list, I started to think about the reasons I was doing these things. Sure, I pay bills because I think I have to, but the reality is that it is a choice I make. Certainly there are people who don’t pay their bills, and there must be some reason for it.

As I tapped into the underlying motivations, I found that I was paying bills to Reduce Anxiety (I felt more relaxed knowing they were paid), Know Where We Stand (going over the accounts gave me a good overview of our financial situation), and Get Ahead (building credit and deciding where it is best to pay extra to help us in the long run is part of the process, too).

My motivations for organizing were to Feel Smart (when I figured out something that would really work for me), Have a Place For Things (not knowing where to put things is part of my clutter problem), and Have Time to Play (because I imagine that this is the end result when I get it all figured out).

Before this exercise, I would have just thought I was doing things because I had to, or because they needed to be done. I didn’t realize that I was getting something out of it, or striving for a better future with each of these small tasks. Soon, I built a small matrix of motivations linked to different activities. What could I do to Learn How Things Work, Reduce Anxiety, and Laugh? Watch TV.

Still, even in doing this exercise, I now notice that I left out some important things, those projects that I wasn’t working on at the time. While this gave me some insight into the things I was doing, it didn’t reach out to the things that were not being done and my reasons for not doing them.

More to be learned…

Posted in Motivation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment