It's Like I Don't Even Know Me

What I’ve learned from staying home during the Pandemic.

The Pandemic has altered my life in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. While the disease itself is horrific, the effects I have seen in my personal life have been somewhat positive. I talk about that a bit here in a piece I wrote in response to a challenge. Being forced to stay home has taught me that I can actually enjoy it. I might be going off the deep end a little bit, but I enjoyed the ten days that I had to stay home from work so much that I want to work from home now. Not as using a VPN to log into the organization’s server, but as in, working for myself. There is a tendency to want to take huge leaps, and I’m all for it. But, there is also a tendency to not think about everything that comes along with that leap if you are successful. So, I’ll be contemplating it for a while.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few things that I have learned. Some of them will be obvious to some people, to the point of having been second nature and never even considering it, but for me they are novel ideas.

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Working outside makes you feel better.

I enjoy trimming shrubs. I even enjoy loading the limbs etc. into the bed of the truck and taking them to the wood pile in the back. Now don’t get crazy; I don’t want to do this every day or every week even (though every week would be ideal for the maintenance of the yard), but I enjoy it.

I still don’t like TV. Staying at home has not changed that.

Working for small bits of time on different things is helpful. Write for thirty minutes, go put laundry in, fold the clothes. Write some more. Sit outside with the cat. Do dishes and clean kitchen. Take a learning tutorial. All in 30-minute chunks or so. You can even take naps; just don’t nap for longer than 30 minutes.

Lists are wonderful tools to keep me focused and help me get more done.

I don’t like mowing the yard. Okay, I knew this one, but it has been reinforced. While working outside has benefits, and I feel better for it, I don’t enjoy doing this particular one, and it would be one of the first things I’d outsource if I could. But I do, in fact, feel better after mowing.

A decluttered space really is more conducive to productivity.

My neighborhood is interesting. I do a lot of the work while sitting at the dining room table in front of windows, and I enjoy watching people, dogs, horses, John Deere tractors, and cars pass in front of the windows.

If you sit in a rocking chair with a cat, she will rub her face across the arms furiously. I do not know why, but this has been proven over and over by more than one cat and more than one rocking chair.

Drinking water is very fulfilling. Preferably with purchased ice, because the stuff made in home freezers tastes funny.

A clean kitchen makes me feel better.

I do not like wasps. I can live in harmony with honey bees, but wasps are aggressive and they prefer to live right by the doorways. They are evil and they must be destroyed. Plus, their tiny little waists make me feel bad about my life choices. I relate better to honey bees and their figures.

Rooms smell better if you clean the cat litter more than once in the morning and once in the evening.

The best ideas come in the shower and when driving. (I knew this already, but staying in place has really brought it home.) (So to speak.)

My cats respond well to me being around. I don’t have to be giving them attention 100% of the time; just being around make them happy.

Washing smaller loads of clothes and folding them straight out of the dryer makes an undesirable chore less undesirable.

If I don’t make time to read for pleasure, I will not read for pleasure Again, obvious, but I’ve done a lot of reading while sitting in coffee shops, which I cannot do at the moment. So, I have to carve out time at home to read, just as I would have carved out time to go to the coffee shop.

I am capable of being tidy.

I am capable of being productive.

What We Do Today

I came across a Memory in Facebook the other day. It kind of took me back, in a good way.

I had left a job that was very stressful and taken a position as a clerk (more or less), as a way to get my foot in the door of another organization that I thought would be better for me. Barry had given me a hand-made leather-bound journal (pictured above) and I used it to help calm my nerves. I wrote in it, I did Zentangle and I drew. I more or less kept that journal with me wherever I went and sought out quiet time for myself, time to be with my journal and my thoughts.

I had begun the Zentangle a few months previous to that, as a way to help manage the stress. It works, if you approach it right. Slow, deliberate lines drawn in a small space can be very meditative. I listened to ambient music on YouTube (Chill music) and did everything I could to not have a meltdown. (It really was a rough period.) I usually spent some time each day tangling with relaxing music playing.

My new job has taken a stressful turn as we change software. Transitions are never easy, and this one is taking its toll on all of us. The other day I saw the picture above on a Facebook memory and I could feel the tingling of the physical effect of relaxing. I have spent so much time tangling and doodling that I’ve created an conditioned response for myself, without even setting out to do so.

Do you ever smell something that takes you back? Nutmeg and Christmas as a child, perhaps? Or, consider the beautiful way an old love song can make you feel the way you did twenty years ago. You’re minding your own business when a song comes on the radio and you’re suddenly in love with somebody again, feeling all the anxiety, inadequacy and elation that comes with young love. When I was a kid we always got fruit in our stockings at Christmas, so when I smell and orange or grapefruit being peeled I’m immediately a child on Christmas morning again, even if for just a moment.

It seems that in the same way I trained myself to relax by doodling, simply by repeating the exercise over and over for an extended period of time. I typically was in a coffee shop or somewhere I could be among people, but still be alone. I didn’t go into the practice with the idea of setting myself up a psychological safety net for the future; I simply wanted to learn to calm my nerves. (I still tangle and doodle, though not with the same frequency.)

When I think about it, I realize that this is not new, not even for me. I’ve read advice on how to learn conditioned responses, by rubbing your thumb on a polished stone in your pocket, for instance. Those things always made sense to me, but they were still rather foreign. Seeing this picture made it concrete. It produced a physical response in me – a relaxing of the muscles in my shoulders and a slowing of breathing.

I’m glad that I chose something that I can look at now. Meditation in any form can be relaxing, but it doesn’t really afford the visual cue that I had when I happened to see the picture. I suppose I could train myself to meditate while rubbing my polished stone and then the polished stone would give me the same cue, but the drawing seems a little stronger. The doodling and drawing were physical exercises. Meditation is physical as well, but it’s almost the opposite of doing something. I have meditated; we spent a great deal of time practicing that when I was younger. I’ve never experienced this sort of response from that time, though. I suppose, knowing what I now know, I could condition myself, but I have a lovely way to do that already that works very well for me. I think I’ll stick to my quiet doodling, but with renewed purpose.

I’ve moved on to mandalas, as well. I still tangle, but I spend more time drawing mandalas than practicing Zentangle these days. I’ll post some pictures of my mandalas when I have more of a collection. In the meantime, I’ll continue to come home, sit by myself with nice music playing and draw slow, deliberate lines, meditating and relaxing. I’ll continue to reinforce this auto-response for myself. I encourage you to try it.

And how about you? What do you do to relax? Have you found yourself at the end of your tether? If so, how did you get through it? I’d love to hear from you.

I Need a Moment

I need some time to get my life together. Just… a moment, maybe. I look at my room and it has so much potential. But, there’s so much clutter, that it remains merely potential. It’s not the beautiful space I know it can be.

We just bought a bedroom set, a beautiful Amish-finished bed frame that has headboard, foot board and drawers. Because there are drawers, nothing can get tossed or lost under the bed. This is particularly nice, because nothing good ever happens under the bed, especially when you have cats. Aside from the bed, I also got a dresser and a nightstand. The set is beautiful, truly, and it’s the first time I’ve bought furniture like this.

It would be even more beautiful if the rest of my room weren't a disaster area. I try to be tidy, but I fail. There is a way to have the things I love around me without feeling like a hoarder; I just have to figure it out. For example, when my father passed, one thing I got was his footlocker. I enjoy seeing it. I just need to remove the cat carrier, the framed posters and other things that I'm too... *throws head back, with back of hand across forehead* tired to deal with. All of it lies more or less out in the open, distracting.

Having cats doesn't help in this respect. Fur is everywhere and if a hairball happens it's going to be on something I love, not the linoleum floor. This discourages one from putting things out that they love. It also discourages one from tidying up at the end of a work day when all you want is to relax and read. You spend all day at work, and then get home to work? It’s a good thing I love my cats. Their fur is really straining our relationship.

I need a month off. That would be about right, a month. It may seem excessive, but I’m convinced that this is the magic number - enough time to rest, and then just when I’m getting bored it’s on to the next thing. The entire first week is to sleep. I need about a week of uninterrupted sleep before I can even think about a task as monumental as cleaning my room, or getting my life together. Then I need some time to go through things and purge. I would appreciate the things I have much more if I could see them. And, I need to organize. I like having a place for everything and everything in its place. When I get REALLY organized we'll be able to switch the artwork out throughout the year. Spring, summer, Michaelmas, Hallowe'en and Christmas. That way all of the artwork we have won’t be out at once, and we’ll be able to appreciate it more.

Also, I need to write a bestseller so that I can be a homemaker. I understand that writing is work, but right now I’m doing it while working a full-time job. I want to just be able to ditch the full-time employment and stay home. I can write from the dining room table; I generally do anyway. (Don't get judgy. Agatha Christie said in her Autobiography that only for one short period did she have a dedicated office. Mostly she just wrote from whatever flat surface she had available.) Then I could do housework and cook dinner. How much commute time would I save? I could have lunch ready most days. Either this is a brilliant idea or (more likely) I'm delusional. Also, I have to have a good enough bestseller to be able to afford a cleaning person and a someone to cut the lawn. I'm not good at housework. I prefer to scratch the cats behind the ears as I pass them, walking from one room of my beautiful, clean home to another.

So, that's my plan. It's nearly midnight and I have my life all figured out. Sadly, I have to drive to work tomorrow. I'd better get some sleep.  

Work Life Balance

A quote from my journal this afternoon regarding my current job vs. my previous job. Kind of a benchmark for me still.

Stories to Tell

I have more big ideas than I can possibly deal with. I recently rearranged my life to be more able to handle them all. The changes are mostly for the best, but I'm learning a lot about myself in the process.

For instance, if there's something I should be doing, then most likely I'm going to sleep. If I were to feel a bout of insomnia coming on, all I'd need to do is decide to empty the cat litter box and give it a good scrub-down. Something like that hanging over my head would lull me to sleep for around 8 hours, no problem. 

In case you were wondering, this is not productive.

One of the main things I've wanted to do is write. I've been putzing along, trying to make progress in this book I've been writing on. I'm part of an online group (WANATribe) where we get together, chat about writing and try to hold each other accountable for our goals. Plus, I've recently joined the NaNoWriMo movement this month. Some men choose to not shave in the month of November; some of us choose to write 1666.67 words per day each day and – theoretically – we'll have a 50K word novel at the end. (NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.) Through this challenge I have learned that I actually can write that many words fairly easily if I put my mind to it. I used to struggle trying to write 500 words at a time, but now I sail past my nightly goal without thinking about it.

Unless, I fall asleep. Knowing that I need to focus and write in the evening after work is the best sedative I can think of for myself. Remind me that this is a critical part of the new life I'm trying to build and I will become positively narcoleptic. It's a struggle, I tell you.

I have learned, though, to use reverse psychology on myself. You see, I don't always fall asleep when I want to write. Sometimes I clean. Sometimes I cook. I'll do anything but write, really, as long as I can talk myself out of doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So, this morning I told myself that I was going to clean the litterbox, then sweep and mop the bedroom. Voilá! Over 1700 words flowed out of my fingertips without me even having to try. Not only that, but I'm supposed to be cooking dinner right now, so I got this blog post in as well. I'm on a winning streak today!

Okay, I think I'm pressing my luck now. People are going to get hungry pretty soon. Better get started on dinner.

Thanks for reading. We'll get together again soon. 

Take care!