one way to hear what you're saying to yourself

the first installment in a week-long series exploring our rituals of talking to ourselves

this happened:  our baby was born.

and then this happened:  the things that i say--and even just silently think--about myself became very, super-duper, incredibly, intensely noticeable to me.

here are some examples--positive, negative, and...well...complicated:

• i look like crap today.
• oh man, i'm an idiot.
• mama can't do anything right. ["mama" is referring to me, not to my own mama, who does almost everything right.]
• i rocked that.
• everyone's going to think i'm [insert negative adjective here].
• look: i can fit into my non-pregnant jeans again!
• i think i can really help with that.
• i'm stressed out, okay?!
• i'm awesome at figuring out those kinds of problems.
• i don't care what he thinks of me.
• i just tried to be a good friend to her.
• we're having the most fun ever, and i am hilarious.
• i'm not doing as much creative work as [insert person, usually a woman, to whom i am comparing myself negatively here].
• i am the luckiest person on the planet.
• i am supermama.
• i sounded like a moron.
• i'm really freakin' good at that.

now, i consider myself to be a pretty self-confident person.  on the whole--from a bird's-eye view--i really do think i'm smart and kind and a good friend and creative and have things to offer the world.  and still, my daily soundtrack tends to be pretty rough on me.

when i say or think these things now, i automatically click to how i'd feel if my daughter were saying or thinking them about herself.  and often, i don't like it.  

so i'm trying to change my daily soundtrack.  and it's hard to do.

i'd love to hear from the non-mamas and non-papas, as well as the parents out there:  when do you hear what you're saying to yourself most clearly?  and how do you change it when you don't love what you hear?

the abundance of cloth

part three in a week-long series about the rituals associated with napkins...yes, napkins

i used to love having dinner at friends' houses who used cloth napkins.  the napkins weren't fancy, but for some reason they gave me a real sense of abundance.  it took a couple of years before i realized that i could have cloth napkins at my house, too.  somehow i had subconsciously associated them with an abundance that i didn't feel, even though a pack of four wasn't very expensive at all.  funny how we do that.

and now: i love my cloth napkins.  and you know what makes them even better?  our napkin rings.  metal napkin rings!  they were a gift, ordered from etsy, and they have our names on them.  it seems silly, but those cloth napkins in those etsy napkin rings make me smile.  they make me feel at home.  they are a mealtime ritual that reminds me how simple and personal and sustainable abundance can be.

i'm curious:  what rituals make you feel abundant?

smartphone vs. vacation

part three in a week-long series about the rituals of summer-vacation-taking

smartphone, you are the enemy of the true vacation.

yes, it seems like no big deal when we're shooting a quick email here, and sharing our awesome vacation photo on instagram there, and picking up a short call, checking our office voicemail, and responding to just this one hilarious tweet from our friend from college.

but...
um...
let's compare:


vacation before you could work, plan, and socialize internationally from almost anywhere on the planet:

• 9:00am:  coffee and breakfast
• 10:30am:  horse around in the ocean with your kid, your best friend, and your best friend's kid
• 12:00pm:  read a magazine lying on your beach chair while periodically poking your leg with your finger to see if you're burning
• 12:30pm:  lunch
• 2:00pm:  nap
• 3:00pm:  play bocce on the sand and lose to your dad...again
• 5:00pm:  shower
• 6:30pm:  go out to dinner and watch the server's eyes get round when your whole crew walks in
• 9:00pm:  drink wine and eat snack food you would never have at home

vacation now:

• 9:00am:  check facebook, twitter, gmail, and work email.  make a mental note to respond to 3 work emails after you make coffee.
• 9:15am:  coffee and breakfast
• 10:30am:  send 3 aforementioned work emails while your kid, your cousin, and your cousin's kid start playing in the ocean.  scroll through facebook for just a quick second, and get surprised when your kid comes back out of the water.  say you were just getting ready to go out to join them.  dang.
• 12:00pm:  read your magazine instead of the work stuff you brought along and feel guilty and stressed about it.
• 12:30pm:  lunch
• 12:45pm:  pick up call from this guy you know who is helping you plan a charity event for next week because you've been playing phone tag with forever.  feel the urgency of what he needs from you, so agree to post something to facebook, your neighborhood listserv, and your parents' group listserv by tonight.
• 1:15pm:  nap
• 3:00pm:  try to post about charity event, and discover that your facebook app is telling you it lost its connection over and over again.
• 3:12pm:  give up and go find your dad playing bocce with the kids on the beach.  take an awesome picture that totally captures the moment and realize that it's so perfect you have to post it on instagram immediately.  try out six different filters, narrow it down to three, decide one is too grainy, and finally choose the one that makes it look like csi miami.
• 3:22pm:  play bocce while periodically looking to see how many likes your photo has gotten.
• 5:00pm:  look up best place for reservations on phone.  read reviews of seven seafood joints within a one-mile radius, and choose pirate's cove.  try to make a reservation using opentable, discover pirate's cove isn't on opentable, and call the restaurant instead.
• 5:23pm:  shower
• 6:30pm:  during dinner at pirate's cove, look up blackbeard on smartphone to prove to your sister that blackbeard was shot and beheaded, since she insists he had to walk the plank.
• 9:00pm:  drink wine
• 10:16pm:  tell your spouse to go ahead to bed without you because you still have to post about the charity event.  after you post, check your work email one last time.
• 11:12pm:  lie in bed thinking about the best way to handle the latest wrinkle in your biggest work project until you fall asleep.

hmph.  i've done some varying versions of the second schedule, but that first one up there seems a whole lot more like a vacation to me.

i'm curious: has your smartphone changed your rituals on vacation?  for the better?  or not?

what s/he wrote

in celebration of july 31, the anniversary of the day my husband and i got married, this week’s blog posts will be about the ways we mark the passage of time.

back in march, gretchen rubin of the happiness project posted "celebrate leap day, or any other minor holiday." i had a one-month-old baby at the time of the post, so i missed it.  but this week, i was looking for gretchen's "why i now own a set of four heart-shaped placemats" post, and my search lead me to both the placemats post and its update, the leap day post.

fantastic.

in these two posts, gretchen describes making a celebratory valentine's day breakfast and planning a fun leap day mini-adventure for her family in an effort to "find occasions for festivity."

in her words, "celebrating minor holidays is one way to make time stand out."

i love this idea for marking time.  i've loved it since i read the placemat post in 2009.  but i haven't done anything about it yet.  the minor holidays--heck, even the major ones--keep sneaking up on me.  i realize at about 11:15 the night before that i don't have pancake mix to make valentine-shaped pancakes for valentine's day or chocolate gold coins for dessert on international talk like a pirate day.

clearly, i wanted to do this way before there was a kiddo in our house.  now, i want to do it even more.  i just have to figure out simple ways that don't necessarily involve a trip to the store.

i'm curious:  do you celebrate minor holidays?

what are your befores and afters?

in celebration of july 31, the anniversary of the day my husband and i got married, this week’s blog posts will be about the ways we mark the passage of time.

lately, i am thinking about the eras in our lives, the ways we measure our "befores" and our "afters."

global standards dictate that the timeline of human history is measured in b.c. and a.d.--or sometimes b.c.e. and c.e.  but i'm more interested in how each of personally marks time.

my memories tend to get automatically passed through the "before daddy died" and  "after daddy died" filter.  i reckon that could sound morbid, but i'm guessing i'm not the only one who has discovered that one of those "before-and-after-death-of-loved-one" filters got installed in my brain without my realizing it.  

i also have the "before baby was born" and "after baby was born" measure, "when i was in chicago" marker, a "when i could still eat gluten" and "gluten-free era" label, and a "when i was in the green/blue/yellow bedroom" filter from the musical bedrooms me and my siblings played growing up.

when i'm writing or performing a character, i often try to identify a moment in which things change for that character.  now i'm curious to think about characters in terms of their "befores" and "afters," the filters through which they catalogue their lives, the ways in which they mark time.

so, you can help me write stronger characters.  let me know:  what are the "befores" and "afters" that mark time in your life?

how do you do your best?

there is so much you can read about how to have a better work life, home life, relationship life, financial life.  so much.  you can get tips for simplifying, asking for a raise, getting rid of your junk, helping your baby sleep, and on and on.

i love reading books and blog posts and magazine articles about this kind of stuff.  they're all about how to be a better me for myself and for the people i love.  after all, even helping-your-baby-sleep-advice is more about the parent than the child.

here's what we have to remember though:  even if we get everything just right, even if we're more grateful, less materialistic, more confident, less confrontational, more outgoing, less busy, even if we're the best self we can be in any given moment:  we still can't control what other people do in response.

and that's okay.  it doesn't mean we should stop trying.

i think it just means that the goal of all this effort can't be to have a perfect life in which everything turns out just as we envision with a perfectly balanced calendar, a big fat paycheck, a fabulously organized hall closet, and a baby who sleeps through night from day 6.  because we'll always be disappointed if a perfect life is the goal.  it ain't happenin'.

for me, it's more about a mantra we've had in our house for the past five months:  everybody do their best.

i'm curious:  what are you working on these days to "do your best?"

when you're disappointed

these are some of the things i do when i am very disappointed about something:

1. stare blankly
2. inhale once through my nose in a loud way and exhale silently
3. say, "well."
4. stay very quiet for a long time
5. take a shower
6. go to sleep at a strange time of day
7. think about what would happen if i fell and broke my arm right then
8. swear intermittently over the course of several hours
9. cry
10. blame myself
11. blame other people
12. decide to cancel my plans and stay home
13. try to figure out how i would write down the roaring in my head in syllables
14. compare myself to other people
15. list all the things on the planet i currently find disappointing
16. ask my dad (who passed away 10 years ago) why this happened
17. think about exercising
18. say out loud that something better is coming
19. smoosh my face into my husband's shirt
20. open the refrigerator door over and over and over again

these are things i do at home, in private (or mostly private).  i don't know what anyone else does when they're very disappointed because they are also at home, in private.  but i'd like to know.  i'd like to know for character research and because i like lists and because other people's habits are really super interesting to me.

so.  i'm curious:  what do you do when you're very disappointed about something?  (don't forget: you can leave a comment as "anonymous" if you don't want your name attached.)

when the blanket's got you

my daughter has just learned to hold on to things.  she grabs onto her blanket, my fingers, her dad's arm hair with all she's got, and she doesn't let go.  in the last few days, she's gotten really good at holding on with not just one, but with both hands.  it's a big deal.

her favorite thing to hold onto is her blanket.  she grabs that sucker and works it between her fingers and pulls it up to chew on it a little bit and generally just gets as much of it as close to her as she possibly can.  and she loves it.

that is, she loves it until she freaks out.  there's always some turning point there when the grabbing on goes from "she's got the blanket" to "the blanket's got her."  and then she's upset, overwhelmed, and panicked--but she still won't let go.

i was thinking yesterday about how we do that to ourselves in adult life, too.  sometimes we grab on so tight that even when it changes from "we've got the blanket" to "the blanket's got us," it's so hard to release that grip.

it's nice to be reminded that sometimes--not always, but sometimes--when it seems like stuff is gonna get us, it might just simmer down if we stop holding on so tight.

i'm curious: what stopped getting you when you stopped holding on with all your might?

fireworks: what makes you stand still?

fireworks were a big deal in my family growing up. for years, we'd all load up in the truck or the station wagon and head over to the state fairgrounds in raleigh on the fourth of july. later, we watched the fireworks on the fourth at the mudcats stadium out near zebulon. and sometimes, just for fun, my dad and my uncle would set off firecrackers in the field at our family's farm. they'd light them up and then run like crazy to get out of the way and get a good view.

since then, i've seen fireworks in a massive crowd of people in downtown chicago, from my apartment window in the baldwin building by the durham bulls ballpark, from a back deck in chatham county surrounded by trees and friends, at the waterfront in wilmington, from a big garden in paris, at the top of a double ferris wheel...

and i love them every time.  i love the way they make us look up.  i love how big they are, and how loud.  i love that they exist for no other reason than to celebrate.  i love the way they make a whole group of children and adults with very little else in common say "ooh" and "aah" in unison--the adults often the most awestruck of all.

most of all though, i love the way fireworks stop me in my tracks.  always, they make me stand still.

i'm curious:  what makes you stand still?

because it helps them feel better

i woke up with hives the other night.  but i thought they were bug bites.  they were all over my chest and shoulders and down my back, and i thought we were infested with a big extended family of spiders or something.  and so, even though it was the middle of the night, and even though the baby was asleep in the co-sleeper attached to our bed, and even though he had absolutely no bites whatsoever making it highly unlikely that our bed was home to a gazillion biting meanies, my husband got up and helped me change the sheets.  he was pretty sure it was hives all along, and--even though he didn't say it--i know he didn't think the sheets really, logically, needed to be changed right that minute.  but.  he helped me change them anyway because he knew it would help me feel better.  (it did.)

i got to thinking about the illogical, irrational, or slightly inconvenient things we do just because we know they will make someone feel better.  i always let my husband sit so he can see the door when we go out to eat.  i'm not sure why, but it just makes him feel better.  i have a friend whose one-time roommate asked that she take all her cool magnets off and just let the refrigerator door be blank and clean and white.  she wasn't a neat freak in general, but that clean refrigerator door just made her feel better.  i know people who like to get to the airport a full two hours in advance, even for a domestic flight.  it's probably a little inconvenient for the family or friends who are traveling with them, but what's the harm?  it makes the other person feel better.

i like that we do this for each other in the world.  and i bet we do it more often that we realize.  i'm almost positive that my loved ones do it for me more often than i realize.

i'm curious:  what small things do you do--even though they're slightly inconvenient or irrational--to help someone feel better?  and even better:  what things like that do your people do for you?

(leave a comment and let me know.  i love stuff like this--these little bits of human uniqueness.  i love them.)

do you watch tv?

i wish we didn’t have a tv.  sort of.

we’ve been making sure our four-month-old daughter doesn’t see the tv.  she’ll have enough screen time in her life that we’d like to keep it out of her world for as long as possible.  and it’s a pretty widely-accepted fact that tv doesn’t do a whole lot for your brain, much less your motivation.

so i’ve been watching less tv, too.  and i haven’t been missing it. 

and then i read an article about what a waste of time tv is, and i agreed with every point.

and then i started thinking about how if we think our kid would so much better off without tv, then we probably think we would be so much better off without it, too.  so why do we still have a tv?

here’s what we use our tv for:

1)      zoning out

2)     relieving boredom

3)     feeling less lonely

4)     watching shows we actually love

5)     watching sports

6)     out of habit

7)     when we’re mad at each other

8)     procrastinating

so the only ones of those eight things that i actually want to use tv for are:  watching shows we actually love and watching sports.  do i have the self-control to actually make that happen?  or am i all or nothing when it comes to the magic square with the addictive flashing pictures?  do we need to get rid of it altogether?  can we do that?

i'm curious:  do you watch tv?

what do you need to let go?

i used to be addicted to coca-cola.  before that, it was pepsi-cola.  before that, it was mountain dew.  in my growing-up house, it was all called "drink."  if you wanted to some pepsi, you asked for drink.  not "a drink," not "the drink," just "drink."  "drink" never referred to milk or juice or water.  those things were called milk, juice, and water.  only drink was called "drink."

somewhere along the way--in college, i think--coca-cola became my constant companion.  i felt wrong--panicky, really--if i didn't have a bottle of coke with me.  and during that time, coca-cola became a part of my identity.  people knew me as the girl who always had a coke with her.  friends teased me about it in that way that makes you feel known and loved for your quirks.  and that lasted--with one small break--until i was about 34 years old.

that was when the caffeine caught up with me.  "drink" is just flat-out awful for your health, no matter how you slice it, and apparently i had used up my lifetime allotment of caffeine in just 34 years.  i started having heart palpitations like crazy, and for a girl whose dad died of a heart attack at age 55, that shit was very, very scary.  so i had to quit coca-cola.  in fact, i quit all drink.

yes, it was hard to say goodbye to the taste and the caffeine and the bubbles.  but here's the thing: i think the hardest part of it was that coca-cola was part of my identity.  i actually thought that i would be disappointing other people if i wasn't the "coke" girl.  that i wouldn't be living up to their expectations of who i was.  that they wouldn't like me as much without that quirky drinking-coke thing.  i was really scared to let go of this thing that people knew me for.  which is strange.  it sounds ridiculous now.  i mean, who wants to be known for drinking coke?  that's not particularly awesome.  anyone can do it, really.

i did, eventually, put down the coke can, and now i haven't had a coke in years.  but i'm wondering:  are there other things in my life that i'm hanging onto just because i've always done them, and i'm scared for them not to be part of my identity anymore?

i'm curious:  are there things that have somehow become part of your identity that you're scared to let go?