Right Sized Life

Today I’m phoning it in.  I don’t have it in me to delve deep.  Sunday early in the day, word came of an avalanche at Stevens Pass, with fatalities.  I thought painfully of the loss of the families left behind, and my next thought was of Chris Rudolph, who I guess is most properly called a colleague, through our shared participation in the outdoor industry, although the first word that comes to mine for me is “friend” even though there are many, many folks who get to claim that title in line in front of me.  I thought about what a shitty, shitty day that would be for Chris on a personal level, and sent him a little love.  And then, I tried to turn my attention to the day in front of me, knowing that there’s always a chance an accident like that will hit close to home, but knowing that there is nothing to do but say prayers to whatever God or spirit we find comfort in, to comfort those left behind.

It was about 6pm when Teresa called and we chit-chatted about the day and at some point when discussing what we’d heard from Stevens and the avy at Alpental, she asked what my friend’s name was, who we’d hung out with one of the times we’d been to Stevens.  I thought for a second, said, “Oh, Chris Rudolph…” and that I’d been thinking about him all day, and what a shitty day he must be having.  Teresa asked me where I was, and if my boyfriend was there, then told me as gently and lovingly and hopefully that the information we’d received was wrong as a best friend could, that Chris was one of the skiers lost in the avy.  She’s been the loving bearer of bad news before, and I don’t envy her this particular role in my life but I do love her for it.

Dinner plans with loving friends started late and with a short conversation about how much this sucks.  Charlie, working at our neighborhood haunt last night made my wine pours a little larger than usual, I think.  The news spread quickly through our not-so-small community, and Chris’s smiling face makes up every other photo in my Facebook newsfeed and I can’t stop thinking about the people who weren’t just “colleagues” or “acquaintances” because if I feel like this, I can’t really imagine their pain and loss.  I’m not interested in talking about relative risk or comfort in knowing someone lived life fully.  When it’s this close to home, there just isn’t comfort.

The only sense I can make is to appreciate that merely knowing Chris made him more than an acquaintance, more than a colleague — made him a friend.  And we should all aspire to live with the kind of whole hearted enthusiasm and joy and camaraderie Chris brought into the world.  My saddest, deepest condolences to the loved ones of all of those lost yesterday, and to the rest of the skiers who were out there.  And Chris – rest in peace, surrounded by music and laughter and camaraderie and joy.

Looking out across the Methow Valley from the front of the hut.

I spent four days last weekend unplugged, in a hut a six mile cross-country ski from the trailhead, with seven friends, no electricity, no running water, and asked myself “Why don’t I live like this all the time?”  We could get cell service in a pinch (or emergency), we had abundant firewood and a blazing fire (when we weren’t too distracted by Yahtzee or cooking for each other to tend it) and access to cross country and backcountry skiing, a master crafted sled run hand built with glee by the amazing man in my life, and conversation about life, love, work, and more.  I wished my best friends (and Maile the Great, my roommate’s dog) could have joined us, so I’m already eyeing dates for a dog-friendly hut reservation (or maybe two) for next year.

The upstairs loft of the hut we stayed in. So cozy and full of laughter.

I love the rhythm of “simple” living.  Waking with the morning, melting water for coffee and tea, slow cooking steel cut oats with hearty fixings for breakfast.  A mid-day play outside to earn our dinner, then a dinner prepared with love and delicious ingredients to rewarm and refuel the body.  Games around the picnic table at night, with a fire blazing.  Staying up past the sun, even though the natural darkness lures your body to rest.  Sleeping soundly with the quiet of the natural space you’re a temporary denizen of, and then starting the whole thing over again, with minor adjustments according to your instincts and body’s needs.

It was a much-needed break, and it’s been hard to come back to the city.  I’ve never noticed before just how loud and consistent the traffic is outside the bedroom window I sleep near most of my nights.  But luckily, today, I’m working from home, which meant working until I was inspired to write, then taking a break to make steel cut oats for breakfast while I write, and then settling in for a quiet, productive day making day job progress until evening plans to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday.  Today’s a good day.

And today also started with a little bit of inspiration from one of my dearest friends, Brendan.  Brendan’s a writer — he has a day job, too, and on the side writes for outdoor industry outlets and his own blog, Semi-Rad.com.  Brendan is an inspiration just by being, but sometimes certain works of his hit an extra cord.  This morning’s Semi-Rad post is called:

This is How You Build a Bike Shop:  On Love

And it’s this week’s must read.  I’m one of those people for whom work is love.  It’s a rocky relationship, sometimes, and I’ve been known to find myself off course, or going through a rocky work-divorce, and hanging on far too long to something that just will never be — and that’s life, and work, for me.  It’s emotional.  It’s personal.  It’s about relationships and aspirations and much to my sometimes-dismay not about the money since my car’s paid off, my only debt is my student loan, and all I need to thrive are my loved ones, a borrowed wi-fi connection, my laptop, a tank of gas and the camping and climbing gear that stows easily in the roof box.  Thanks, Brendan, for the reminder that work is love, for some of us — and it’s a blessing, not a curse.

This is a cop-out of a post, since I overslept my writing alarm clock and it’s a work at home day that I have to be in the office, so I have approximately eleven minutes.  Go.

Maile the Great, my roommate’s best-dog-in-the-world, has been staying with me and my man at his house the last couple of days while Teresa is out of town for work.  She loves his house — he’s got a big, play-friendly backyard, and she loves to run circles in it.  There’s a cat next door who sometimes pops over the fence to be chased.  She’s allowed on the bed in the house (although NOT the sofa, which she’s perplexed about, even though the rules are the same at home).  When she and I stay at home alone when Teresa’s gone, she sleeps all day and mopes ceaselessly.  When she and I stay at the man’s she’s a picture of balance and happiness.

When we get up in the morning, she’s not quick to join us.  She lounges in bed, until she feels ready to start her day.  At that point, she slips into the spare room — it’s the room where he makes music, where our ski gear resides in between trips, and where I meditate every night (when I haven’t fallen off the wagon, like I did last week) — and does her morning Doga practice.  We don’t notice her headed in there; we just notice that the house is quiet and she’s no longer on the bed, and if I investigate I’ll find her in that sunrise-warmed room, facing the direction that feels right to her for that day — sometimes East, sometimes West.  I imagine her in a little doggy meditation, or perhaps dreaming dog daydreams of snow or squirrels.

Maile loves with her whole little body, and she’s very good at getting what she wants most even without being able to communicate in English.  Like on Saturday, her (and my) little day was made when the man saw a sunbeam in the living room that could only be improved by the presence of a little dog in it.  He moved a table so that her bed could go in that sunbeam, and on that bed she laid for as long as they sun shone.  It was a reminder that sometimes love leads others to look out for us, too — if we’re really, really lucky.  It was a reminder of the simple pleasure of a sunbeam shining in through a late winter window.  It was a reminder that it’s a good thing to stop and sit for awhile, when you find somewhere very happy and comfortable.  And it was a reminder to seek out company carefully, and to surround myself with people who look for sunbeams that they can move tables to make room for me in, once in awhile.

There will be no post this Thursday since I’ll be six miles off the grid in a ski hut with no cell service and no WiFi (praise all that’s good and holy in this world).  Have a lovely week, and try to take Maile’s advice… take some time to meditate each morning, and look for sunbeams with your name on them and good-hearted souls to help you make your way into them.

One of the things I’ve been working on in balancing my life is prioritizing the stuff that needs doing for my personal life.  I’m not talking about date nights or hair cuts or spa days (although whoa – that sounds good right now) … I’m talking about the business of my personal life.  My goal a few weeks ago was to complete my Washington State Bar Association license renewal; I made progress but didn’t tick it off the list completely because I needed to check one thing with my old business bank.  For whatever reason, that one thing was unable to be handled via online banking or a call to the customer service center; I would have to visit a branch in person.

One day this week I took a lunch break (which I never do, and need to do more often) and went to the bank branch closest to my office.  Bank branches are pretty strange places nowadays — when I walked in, there was a woman working behind a desk off to my left, and a man sitting in the chair in front of her.  There were three tellers behind the counter, one of them on the phone, and the other two eagerly awaiting my question.  Perhaps scarcity of takers makes customer service more enthusiastic, in banking.  After telling the young man behind the counter what I needed, he phoned the woman at the desk approximately 20 feet away, whose voice I could not hear through the phone, but could hear clear as day through my left ear.  She said Jake could handle it, and after I waited a few minutes, the “customer” got up from the chair in front of the woman and walked over to greet me.

Jake’s desk had two sets of business cards on it — the ones on the left had a really finance-y job title, but the ones on the right were what caught my eye, with the title “Relationship Manager.”  As he typed numbers into his terminal window — who still uses command line interfaces? Your bank, that’s who — and gregariously asked me questions about my work and my career path and sprinkled in stories about his own.  We had in common that we both were seeking a career that would let us help people.  I tried out practicing law, which didn’t often satisfy that particular criteria.  He wanted to be a firefighter or police officer, but “Had a little too much fun in college,” and couldn’t pass a polygraph.  I thought about telling him that he’d probably be better off passing a polygraph (by telling the truth and dealing with the consequences) than trying to cheat one and failing but who am I to dole out such advice… that could be totally wrong.  He didn’t share how he landed behind the Relationship Manager’s desk at a suburban bank — but he did say that he’s reached a place where he’s comfortable… it’s less, now, about what he does, and more about the fact that he’s living comfortably and can pay his bills each month.  Although he did observe, with a momentary faraway glance, that there’s a sweet spot between “In the last five years, have you …” on a polygraph, and the magical age of 35 at which time he said he’s “too old” to enter the fire academy.

Sigh.

I’m 35, and I feel like I’ve just started being grown-up enough to live my life with any kind of direction.  I can’t imagine deciding that my life’s calling is to run into burning buildings to save peoples lives before reaching this level of maturity.  Maybe I’m just a late bloomer.

I started to give him a little “it’s never too late” pep talk, that if the academy really doesn’t admit folks past a certain age, there’s always some other way to fill that desire — I’ve wanted, ever since I was a kid, to be a teacher and never have for more than a lecture or a semester at a time, but I seek out ways to teach and coach and design curriculum in whatever work I’m doing at the time.  But who am I to pep talk anyone else about their career choices?

Simply Hired lists 586,663 openings right now with the job title “Relationship Manager.”  I gotta say, that’s a pretty cool job title for a connector like me.  But man – the companies those jobs are listed at… no thank you.  I’ll take the freaky new fluorescent lights above my shared cubicle anyday over the likes of those.  It does remind me, though, that I can think about my job as an opportunity to leverage my real strengths, and to try to work toward making my current job something that better uses my skills.  Maybe someday I’ll be a Teacher / Trainer / Coach / Relationship Manager / Storyteller for a living.  Who knows.

So, thanks to Jake for opening my eyes to another new job title, and for reminding me not to settle or grow apathetic.  I like to think that he’ll decide to apply for the academy just in the nick of time, in this window between the expiration of the “too much fun” he had in college and the magical age of “too old” at turning 35.  I picture him using his people skills and the responsibility that you earn over years of living as an adult to show up the 20somethings in school who don’t realize how serious the undertaking they’re embracing truly is.  I see him graduating with honors, and being snapped up by his first choice fire department.  I see him struggling with the learning that a dream job is never actually a dream job for very long.  But I see that awareness balancing that with the sheer bliss that comes from realizing a dream you’ve had for your whole life.

And I’ll ask myself… what have I always wanted to do?  If someone asked me, “What do you really want to do with your life?” what part of my answer would involve a faraway glance and a sweet spot that may just happen to be right now?  What have you always wanted to do with your life?  Have you?  Will you?

This is going to have to be uber snappy… I’d scheduled my blog posts for Mondays and Thursdays because those are my telework days, so I can spend the time I’d ordinarily spend commuting writing two days a week… but for the time being, due to changes at work, my telework schedule has been reduced (or suspended, still waiting to clarify that).  I guess you could say that’s a step in the wrong direction, but that’s life, and it’s a reminder to me to focus on the things that are within my control, and try not to get spun up about the things that aren’t.

This weekend involved a complicated plan to pack up the car, rent nordic gear, head for the hills, sleep out under the stars, and then take a nordic ski class on Sunday.  We got as far as the bags sitting by the backdoor, ready to be loaded outside and into the car, before realizing that we were pushing it too hard for the weekend.  What we both needed was rest, and some time to pay attention to some life logistics that get missed when you’re running at full speed from adventure to adventure.  So, instead of our original plans, the bags stayed where they were until we unpacked Sunday night, and the weekend was spent at home.  We worked on a puzzle, we cooked a turkey breast and made stock and then soup from scratch with the bones.  I had brunch with my girlfriends (plus a newborn — talk about a marvel, to watch my friend hold and console her baby, while eating a salad, and catching up on the details of our lives — I was struck that I have it quite easy, in terms of balance, in some ways).  We read and researched and wrote to catch up with friends and family.  We took care of some of what needed taking care of, and rested.  And I don’t regret it one iota.  Next weekend will likely be similar, and I am good with that.

It also meant that Friday night I could sit down and work on my annual vision board project.  Make fun of my woo woo all you like, but I did this exercise last year and felt it yield fruit, so I’m back at it again this year.  It’s incomplete, but thanks to a pair of scissors and magazines including Yoga, Poets & Writers, Whole Living, Fast Company, and more, I now have a reminder to check in with periodically through the year to remember that (crap, I don’t have citations – please forgive me… these are words from other writers I clipped from the various magazines):

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

“Modern business is pure chaos.  But those who adapt will succeed.”

“Make your whole life as you as it can be.”

After I’d cut out oodles of teeny pieces of paper, I arranged them into the themes that had apparently resonated with me, when I went to town with the scissors.  Themes like “Beginning / Starting,” personal evolution / improvements / changes, and professional evolution / improvements / changes dominated.  The middle two, I would have predicted; the first came as a surprise, but I think it’s just about the realization that things change.  I’m learning the same thing through my meditation practice.  My first day meditating this year was in a class, and the meditation practice involves a simple chant.  Sa – Ta – Na – Ma.  Repeated through the course of the meditation.  Afterward, she explained the meaning of each of the sounds:

• SA is the beginning, infinity, the totality of everything that ever was, is or will be.
• TA is life, existence and creativity that manifests from infinity.
• NA is death, change and the transformation of consciousness.
• MA is the [...] joy of the infinite.

I thought back about my meditation, and realized that “NA” was the sound I’d hesitated on or missed the most of any.  I’ve thought about that as I’ve continued my practice — that I, apparently, have some getting used to the idea that change involves a phase of “destruction” and a phase of “transformation.”  I like the transformation part, it’s just the “destruction” part I have a hard time getting comfortable with.  So in little ways, I’ve invited my discomfort with “destruction” over for tea in the last week — especially, for example, engaging in necessary conflicts instead of bottling them up and trying to ignore them.

And now I’m one minute past the time I must leave for my commute to the office, so it’s an awkward stop right there.  Where has your focus been this week?  What are you learning in your own efforts to right-size your life?

I haven’t logged into my Get It Done list since December 6th.  There are 37 things in the most recent version of it — the version that’s built up since I last deleted everything and started from scratch.  I also have 35 more items in my “Action” folder in my work email — that’s where emails go when they need more than the quick 2 minute or less answer I accommodate when I’m doing email triage.  Oh, and not to mention the 335 items in my inbox (from the last two weeks) that I have yet to triage … yeah.  Aside from work overload, task management kind of crushes me.

What I want is a ZenDesk for my entire “work” life (including the parts of my personal life that are “work-like” like managing finances, dealing with service providers, etc.).  I want one place where everything goes, that I can quickly triage once a day and filter out the “not going to do’s” which would then punt back an autoresponse to the sender; to mark the “do now’s” and the “do this week’s” so that they’re easy to spot and have a “due date” attached; to flag the “waiting for someone else’s”; and a field where I could add comments or “I’m working on it” notes so that the sender could peek at the ticket without having to email me to see if I got their first email and what the status is.  Then, after doing a stringent anti-spam campaign, my work email would be nearly silent (since almost everything would be going into my ZenDesk) and my personal email would be reserved for personal correspondence, and I’d be able to see it as a sanctuary to stay connected in long form with my friends and family, instead of another source of additions to the to-do list.

But, for now, I have my work email triage system, my Get It Done List, and that’s that.

In my efforts to get this life into balance, I need to figure out how to reclaim time to actually focus.  I don’t actually have ADHD — I am, traditionally, a deep-diver, with a great ability to focus and work even in the presence of distraction.  But the work life I have now IS ADHD … it’s monitoring a feed of customer messages, keeping an eye on internal communication, and trying to blot out the nagging voice in the back of my head asking, “But when are you actually going to DO your WORK?”  Now, when I carve out time to actually do project work, I sit down and am so distracted by the knowledge that the messages are still inbound — and will be there waiting for me when I’m done with this task, adding to the workload — that I can hardly focus.  It’s easier to just firefight all day than it is to sit down and carve out time and space to focus on work that actually takes effort and thought.  As a result, I’ve let my “focus” muscle atrophy and it desperately needs rebuilding.

Last night as I was winding down my day, thinking about how to organize the projects and tasks that make up my work and work-like parts of my personal life, I came up with this plan.

• Clear out my GetItDone list.  At this point, almost everything on there is moot or completed, and a fresh list helps keep my mind more calm.  Once that’s cleared out, that list will become my “projects and next steps” list.  Every little request (especially by email) will not go on there.  Projects with their major phases or steps identified will — so this becomes my “Focus” list.
• I have several projects that just require “Maintenance,” like doing account management or helpdesk time, or moderation, or other routine work that’s super tactical in nature.  Those projects get identified as “Maintenance” projects.
• Now that I’ve got an idea of the projects that will require Focus and/or Maintenance, each day I’ll have a daily Short List of what’s reasonable to do — taking into account deadlines and priorities — that day.  I’ll pick one project from the “Focus” list and devote the morning to that project, I’ll schedule my email triage times, and I’ll pick a project from the “Maintenance” list and allocate at least an hour or two to those more tactical tasks.  At that point, there are barely enough hours in the day for bathroom breaks and lunch, so I think that’s about all I can squeeze in and I’ll call it good.
• The time I set aside to work through my email inbox will aim for once at mid-morning, and once at the end of the day.  This will be time to triage, to address the messages I can address quickly, and to communicate expectations and file for “Action” the messages I can’t address quickly.  I’m going to try to reserve the morning for Focus-oriented work … so part of that will be not spending my morning triaging email (if I can actually get away with that and still be performing my job at an acceptable level).  If I spend the first few most productive hours of my work day working, then at least I’ve gotten something done before going into firefight mode.  ”Action” messages either fall into a Focus project or a Maintenance project, so I can schedule the work on them accordingly.
• And last but not least, the Short List will include my responsibilities to my personal life, since taking care of myself and my personal responsibilities is every bit as important as doing so in my work life.  Whether it’s something like keeping a commitment to a friend to get together, or making sure I get to the climbing gym, yoga studio, or out for a run, or what have you — my responsibilities to myself and my personal life seem to be the easiest for me to put “on hold” to focus on “more important” things.  Well — self — I’m here to tell you, that’s bullshit.  I am the most important thing.  My relationships, my health, my well-being, my spiritual life are the more important things.  So, giving them the importance they’re due, they go on the Short List.

Today, I woke up and haven’t yet logged into email (even though it’s nearly 9am, gasp).  Since I’m teleworking, I’ll have to do a quick triage before I dive into my Focus project for the day, but that’s only to spot any 911s from overnight since my co-workers don’t have the ability to walk over to my desk if something’s on fire.  By 9:15 am I’ll be working on a huge Focus project for the day, which I’ll hopefully wrap up by 1pm.  Since I’m so far behind on inbox triage, the rest of the day (ideally after a quick lunch) will be inbox triage and general maintenance work … no Maintenance Project for the day, but that’s okay.  And then for my personal life, I have to visit a bank branch to get a task done that has to be done in person, and I want to go climbing.  It’s been a very long time, and I miss it — and I miss who I am when I’m fostering that part of myself.

And just like in meditation, if I find myself wandering off the planned path, it’s not a crisis.  It’s an opportunity to observe that I’ve wandered off, and re-locate the path, again to get back on it … without judgment.

So that’s what I’m going to try.  What tips and strategies have worked for you, to actually get stuff done and take care of all of the parts of your life?

There wasn’t much time for reading this week — it’s been a 6:30 am alarm clock and a 1 am “off duty” each day while I’ve been at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City.  So, no new resources for you this week, but in the absence of great articles to read, here’s an alternative update.

One of the delights of this week’s Outdoor Retailer show was an invitation from the apparel brand, Prana, to attend a one-hour “mindfulness session” on Saturday afternoon of the show.  The session was led by author and meditation teacher Mark Coleman.

After a one-minute silent meditation and discussion, we did a longer guided meditation and then discussed our individual experiences.  At one point in the conversation, Mark reached for a water bottle to illustrate a point he was making, and gently picked it up with one hand.

“You can pick up the water bottle,” he said, “or you can strangle the water bottle,” he added, tightening his grip around the bottle until the plastic crackled and the bottle was crushed inside his grip.

I am a total bottle strangler.

One of my greatest challenges is figuring out how to exert just the right amount of effort.  Take this week, for example.  I was supposed to work Wednesday through Friday, then take the weekend off to ski.  Instead, I worked past midnight every night this week (and that includes both days of the weekend).  And even while I was doing it, I thought to myself, “Why?”

WHY do I work so hard?  It’s not external pressure — I could have stopped work at 5pm on Friday and skied all weekend, and nobody would have noticed.  The painful flip side to that is the knowledge that nobody but me is going to notice that I worked all weekend!  I strangled the shit out of OR (like I always do), and I’d like to learn how not to do that.

I learned — after much effort — how to not strangle law school.  I felt intense pressure and anxiety during law school.  I felt like if I didn’t study every minute, I’d flunk out.  So I overcompensated, and performed above the level I needed to during my first two years of school.  It wasn’t until my last semester of law school that I actually achieved my goal of “picking up” law school instead of “strangling” it, and was delighted by my first straight B’s report card.  Those straight B’s meant that I passed all my classes, but they also meant that I’d taken care of more than just my schoolwork that semester.  I’d climbed, I’d spent time with friends outside of school and family, I’d taken care of myself.  Instead of an A in school and a D in living, I was stoked to score straight B’s across the board.

So now, I am home, and it’s a day where my deadline is not yet met, I am at the place of tired where I feel as if my eyes are going to water.  Today will roll into tomorrow, which was full to a convex meniscus even before I roll today’s missed deadline into tomorrow morning’s workload.

And it’s unmistakable that I do this to myself.  I overpromise.  I set expectations too high (for myself, and when communicating expectations to others).  I put accommodating other peoples’ timelines ahead of taking care of myself (or honoring my own boundaries) and try to juggle more balls than I have the skill or temperament to juggle.

So what do I do to loosen my stranglehold on these facets of my life?  I did it once — during law school — and I can do it again, right?

What I learned then was to take time to climb; to make a schedule and stick to it even when the work wasn’t “done;” and to make a point of spending time with friends that weren’t a part of my “work” life, with whom I could talk about anything but law school.  Now, in the years that have passed, I’ve learned about meditation and flow and — a concept that I’ve spent precious little time indulging in lately, and which probably deserves more of my effort — lightness.  In times of stress, I actually close my eyes and think of a feather.  It’s white, like the one in Forest Gump.  It hangs in midair, floating gently from side to side.

When I feel serious, I feel heavy.  Attached to the ground.  I feel the gravity of being pulled down; the inertia of not moving; I feel anchored.  When I think of a feather, I’m reminded that lightness enables movement.  Lightness leads to flow.

I learned this same lesson through climbing.  If you overgrip — if you hang on harder than the minimum amount of effort that it takes to keep yourself on the wall, you pump out, your endurance fails, and you can’t hold on anymore.  Worst case scenario, you feel your fingers actually peel one by one off the grip you were holding; the force on the remaining straining fingers increased because of the additional weight they now have to bear because of the failures that have occurred, this process repeating until you fall. That lesson is so familiar to my cells, that just typing those words made my hands sweat.

And I’ve learned strategies through meditation.  If I gently return my attention again and again to what is here before me, rather than spinning off about consequences or what happens next, then I can be more present.  What is the purpose, in this context, for strangling the shit out of a bottle (or a writing project, or a proposal, or a speaking engagement, or a rock climb)?  If I’m present, and mindful, then I can pick up the bottle deliberately, with just the necessary amount of effort to achieve the goal.

This is one area where I’m in the awareness stage, not the “I have the answers” stage.  How about you?  What are your tips and strategies for lightening the stranglehold on life and work and exerting only the necessary amount of force?

That I’m sitting down for 20 minutes to eat a relatively healthy breakfast of oatmeal and  a banana, and writing my Thursday blog post today, is a freaking miracle.  Or, if not a miracle, a testament to my commitment to actually honor these promises I’ve made myself.  To write every day, to publish twice a week, to meditate daily.  If I stopped typing and hit “Publish” right now, I’d consider this a success.  But I’ve got a little break before my next commitment, so this time is for me, and I’m going to keep typing.

I’m at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City, along with about 20,000 other people who work in industries connected to the outdoors.  The show is a whirlwind of thirty minute meetings cut short to make the next one only a few minutes late, if possible, even though it’s a fifteen minute hoof from one end of the convention center to the other.  It’s the place where I refill my “hug tank” twice a year, and where I’m reminded why I worked so hard to find my place in this business.  What it isn’t — it isn’t a bastion of work life balance.  Meetings start early, lunch rarely happens, the work is never done, the dinners and nightlife are hard to miss, and then, after all of that, there’s the work that still needs to get done before sleep.

This is my sixth show, and I love it.  It’s hard work, but I love the work (I get to pretend I’m a journalist for a few days) and the people I get to do it around, here.  This was the first show that was hard to rally for — it’s a blessing that my life at home is such that it’s now really, really, hard to hit the road.  I may not have work-life balance figured out yet, but I sure am lucky on the life front, and being here helps re-energize me about the work.

What helps YOU re-energize about your work?

So since writing that first hastily written post, I still haven’t sat down to make this blog pretty — since it’s more a journal, and a way to hold myself accountable to setting and keeping certain goals, I’m not going to sweat the look and feel.  Forgive me.  :)

Set and kept goals for the last few days:  meditating 20 minutes a day, and writing every day.  WAHOO!!!!!  Both practices unfurl my creativity in a way that I love… it’s almost predictable, that if I tend to my spirit, and I exercise my pen-holding hand, I’ll experience bursts of creativity in other parts of my life, that otherwise may be drowned out by the overly loud voices of “must do’s” or other kinds of anxiety.

In addition, I’ve been on a reading kick.  A few highlights…

1. An email from a colleague and kickass woman who’s taking her years of success at her current employer and turning that into future years of success in her own business (with her now-former employer as a client).  Tami – as soon as the website’s up, I want an interview for this blog.  More lengthy response to come via email, and I’m SO excited for you.
2. A blog comment from my incredibly brilliant and large-hearted friend Tantek with some links that left me clicking for several hours (thank you!).  Try The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow, in response to Paul Graham‘s The Acceleration of Addictiveness.  Flow is something I think a lot about — I think a lot about finding those pockets of work / situations / social settings/ that feel natural and effortless and appreciating them sincerely, rather than always existing in a state of force.  Imposing the “stress of focus,” as T puts it, is something I can do more of, instead of just feeling overwhelmed by noise.
3. Apparently these topics are drawing attention from the pop Psychology culture.  I like how the page called The Lost Art of Single-Tasking on Psychology Today is actually a landing page for ten articles and two other landing pages.  Avoid distractions, now!
4. Two other articles stood out in my newsfeed last week:  The Four Year Career profiles a number of “scanners” / “Renaissance people” with an emphasis not only on the new, shorter “job tenure” but also emphasizing career changers.  And while I’m a little too old to be a Millennial, this one also resonated in some ways in thinking about my kickass girlfriends:  Millennial Women Are Burning Out At Work By 30… And It’s Great For Business.

And last but not least, I found myself suckered into yet another Personality Type theory book, this time, Do What You Are:  Discover the Perfect Career For You Through the Secrets of Personality Type.  I find Personality Type theory interesting because (1) it reminds me that no particular way of approaching things is better or worse than any other, we’re just all different and have different strengths; and (2) it reminds me that I have certain strengths and orientations that are productive and useful in the right settings and situations, even if they’re not always welcome.  While there wasn’t much new to me in the descriptions of the temperaments and personality types, one little nugget did stand out in a way it hadn’t previously:  that iNtuitives are oriented toward the future, while Sensors are more oriented toward what can be presently seen, felt, smelled, tasted, heard — sensed.  According to this book,

“[Sensors] trust whatever can be measured or documented and focus on what is real and concrete.”

“Intuitives…naturally read between the lines and look for meaning in all things… Intuitives focus on implications and inferences.  Unlike Sensors, they value imagination and trust their inspirations and hunches.”

Whoa.  Like, WHOA.  That so succinctly describes the conflict between my natural way of working and most of the employment settings I’ve been in (other than the one I owned myself).  No matter what my job title, I’m a natural process improver — and sometimes, that’s totally not what any given employer wants from me!  The single most helpful part of this book were the detailed descriptions by type — “As an XXXX, career satisfaction means doing work that:” — which I pretty much could have written the list they provided myself, without even a prompt.  The “popular occupations” recommendations won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s ever seen a career counselor and/or completed a skills and interest inventory, but the “possible pitfalls” section for each type is an accessible way to see what some of your own blind spots may be (mine was pretty right on).

And, the tidbit that made the book worth its purchase price for me is the section called “The Final Piece:  Changing or Keeping Your Job… The Key to Success.”  Sounds cheezy, but the chapter for my “type” was spot on with helpful advice for “massaging” my current job into one in which I may spend more time in “thrive” mode than in “firefight” mode.  The suggestions are — again — exactly what I’d list out, if someone asked me “How do you think you could massage your current job into one that suits you better?”  But it’s validating to read a list written down in a book.  And I appreciated that the advice is totally accessible and within my control — it’s not about going to a boss and saying, “Hey, this stuff needs to change.  It’s about having the discipline to structure my work in a way that suits me better.  Some of the advice for me:  to create opportunities for myself to think and unplug; to focus on one major project at a time; to emphasize opportunities to perform mission / vision work; to emphasize writing and publishing / sharing my thoughts and ideas; and embracing opportunities to teach and coach in my field of expertise.  All, spot-on, and all things that I can exercise control over, in my current (awesome) job.

After reading the book, and a good sleep, and a great journal writing session, it occurred to me — just like people have a Personality Type … systems of people also have a dominant (or extroverted) Personality Type.  Families, friends, co-workers, even entire organizations have a personality, and these concepts of Personality Type theory may come into play where the individual intersects with larger people systems.  WHOA again!  Head explosion!

So that’s it for this week.  What have YOU learned this week, in your efforts to right size your life?