tim sanders posted this about four years ago, but i thought of it immediately when i embarked on a rituals of summer-vacation-taking week.
one of the rituals of taking a vacation used to be coming back to an email inbox that you imagined would be chock full and would require several hours to deal with. now, you don't have to imagine it because you can just-real-quick check your work email from vacation on your fabulous smartphone, and you already know what's awaiting you when you return. in fact, you've probably half-heartedly dealt with some of it during vacation. and you've certainly thought about one or two items, whether you've responded to them or not.
i like tim sanders' idea for managers, co-workers, and clients:
when I worked at yahoo, i put my employee’s vacation days into my calendar to remind me to leave them off threads or bcc/ccs. when there was an email that they would eventually need to see or be copied on (when they got back), i would part [sic] it in the draft folder, then send all of them the day they returned.
i'm going to try it. i'm going to put emails to people who are on vacation in a draft folder and send them when they return. it sounds to me like a kind ritual to put in place.
Showing posts with label what s/he wrote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label what s/he wrote. Show all posts
8.19.2012
8.12.2012
what s/he wrote
part seven in a week-long series all about the rituals of being friends
a long old time ago, someone whose writing i respect said some mean things about my writing--valid criticism, perhaps, but said in a mean, ouchy way. when a new friend heard about it, she defended me thoroughly, intelligently, and without reservation. she may not remember it, but i sure do.
in my mind, it cemented our friendship status. that's one of the rituals of friendship, after all: leaping to the other person's defense.
fast forward fifteen years, and i still consider the woman who defended me a friend. which leads me to another ritual of friendship: celebrating the other person's successes.
that's why this week's what s/he wrote is a little different. i haven't actually read the thing that i'm going to ask you to read. it's my defender-friend's debut novel. her name is emily colin, the book is titled the memory thief, and it's available beginning august 21. you can see the trailer here. and if you're a book club kind of person, check this awesomeness out.
p.s.: the mean-things-sayer is now my friend, too, and she's an extraordinary person. but that's another story.
a long old time ago, someone whose writing i respect said some mean things about my writing--valid criticism, perhaps, but said in a mean, ouchy way. when a new friend heard about it, she defended me thoroughly, intelligently, and without reservation. she may not remember it, but i sure do.
in my mind, it cemented our friendship status. that's one of the rituals of friendship, after all: leaping to the other person's defense.
fast forward fifteen years, and i still consider the woman who defended me a friend. which leads me to another ritual of friendship: celebrating the other person's successes.
that's why this week's what s/he wrote is a little different. i haven't actually read the thing that i'm going to ask you to read. it's my defender-friend's debut novel. her name is emily colin, the book is titled the memory thief, and it's available beginning august 21. you can see the trailer here. and if you're a book club kind of person, check this awesomeness out.
p.s.: the mean-things-sayer is now my friend, too, and she's an extraordinary person. but that's another story.
8.05.2012
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?
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?
7.29.2012
what s/he wrote
my fellow theatre-maker and creativity coach tamara kissane posted this last week, titled how to fall like a cat. i'm a sucker for how-to posts, and i'm hoping to write a few myself sometime soon, so i was excited to read this one from the start.
both the post title and the idea of watching an animal for clues about ways to be in the world are very cool. but the part i've been thinking about over and over is tip #3 about what to do mid-fall:
my first thought after reading this was: how do you know where the ground is? but now i'm thinking: how do you know what the ground is? is the ground the loss of the job, the bad review, the betrayal? is it the first time you can't pay the bill, the second weekend when the audience is only a quarter full, the packing of your stuff? or is it the first day of the new job, the moment you start to make a new show, the night you get dressed for a new first date?
i'm super curious: when have you been most grounded in your life?
both the post title and the idea of watching an animal for clues about ways to be in the world are very cool. but the part i've been thinking about over and over is tip #3 about what to do mid-fall:
Tip 3: Orient yourself. It’s easy to get caught up in the HOLY SH!T of falling and remain overwhelmed by it until you’ve hit the ground. However, if possible, and as soon as possible, orient yourself. Which way is up? Which way is down? What’s the landscape and where are you headed? What can you do? What resources are available to soften your landing? Understand what is happening in the moment. Orient yourself so you can land feet first.
my first thought after reading this was: how do you know where the ground is? but now i'm thinking: how do you know what the ground is? is the ground the loss of the job, the bad review, the betrayal? is it the first time you can't pay the bill, the second weekend when the audience is only a quarter full, the packing of your stuff? or is it the first day of the new job, the moment you start to make a new show, the night you get dressed for a new first date?
how can you hope to feel oriented if you don't know where or what the ground--the bottom--is?
maybe, just maybe, hitting the ground is the good part of a fall. maybe it's the part where you finally feel oriented, the part where you know what's the real hard stuff and what you're just imagining to be bad and scary, the part where you feel the dirt between your toes and go from there.
maybe, just maybe, hitting the ground is the good part of a fall. maybe it's the part where you finally feel oriented, the part where you know what's the real hard stuff and what you're just imagining to be bad and scary, the part where you feel the dirt between your toes and go from there.
maybe when falling, i should try very hard to remember that hitting the ground and being grounded often aren't very far apart at all.
i'm super curious: when have you been most grounded in your life?
7.22.2012
what s/he wrote
a few weeks ago, i saw this statement from my friend yk hong: "the first time i meet you i will already love you." i've been thinking about it ever since. short and simple, yes. but a pretty big deal. "the first time i meet you i will already love you."
i haven't seen yk in years and years, but even back then, i believe that statement was true for her. me, on the other hand: i believe hard in the good in people, but still my own stuff sometimes gets in the way.
i haven't seen yk in years and years, but even back then, i believe that statement was true for her. me, on the other hand: i believe hard in the good in people, but still my own stuff sometimes gets in the way.
so i've been thinking: what would change in our lives if we could adopt yk's mantra?
could we go to parties and already love the person we don't know, instead of staring as we slurp on our drinks and asking with furrowed brows in a stage whisper, "who is that at the artichoke dip?"
could we walk into business meetings and know that the more powerful, more experienced, more everything person we're shaking hands with is lovable and awesome and will be enjoyable to know?
could our exchanges with the cash register guy at the gas station, the server at the restaurant, and the guitar guy at the shop on the corner feel different because of an assumption of love?
i wonder: can we change the texture of our interactions simply by deciding that "the first time i meet you i will already love you"? could it make us more interested in the other person? or at least less likely to ignore them? could it help us forget some of our own nervousness, self-consciousness, and tendency toward comparison? could it mean that we go easier on folks, give them a little bit more benefit of the doubt, just because we already love them?
i think i'm going to try it. i'll let you know how it goes.
7.15.2012
what s/he wrote
a friend recently shared this new yorker article on facebook: why are american kids so spoiled? it's a ten-minute read, but it's well worth it. the author discusses a lot of the same ideas that i recently read in the continuum concept, a book written in the 1970s that had me nodding my head, reading bits out loud to my husband, and saying "oh, right, of course!" when just about every page had something to say that made great intuitive sense to me.
back before my husband and i got married, we did an exercise that i got excited about trying after reading this at the fabulous a practical wedding. the exercise: over the course of several conversations, we identified the values that we wanted to be present in our marriage, and then we tried to plan our wedding based on those values, too.
we had planned to have a similar set of values conversations before our daughter was born that would help guide us as we raise her, but she busted out a month early, and that exercise--like many other things on our "to do before baby" list--remains undone.
after reading the continuum concept and the new yorker article, though, i think we might need to make time for that conversation. here's a quote from the article: "what values do we convey by turning our homes into warehouses for dolls? by assigning our kids chores and then rewarding them when they screw up? by untying and then retying their shoes for them?"
we don't have a "warehouse of dolls" and we're nowhere near shoelaces-age yet, but the idea is important to me. and while i don't agree with everything in either reading, i do think this: we make so many small, in-the-moment decisions to try and do what's best for our kiddo, and those decisions would feel stronger to me if we had our personal list of values to measure them against.
so all of this talk so far is marriage- and kid-related, yes, but it gets me thinking about our busybusybusy, choice-choked adult lives of all kinds. do we need to be more explicit with ourselves about our values so that, at the very least, all that busybusybusy is spent in ways we really want to be spending our lives? has everyone else already done that except me? do you have a list of your values posted to your bathroom mirror or what?
back before my husband and i got married, we did an exercise that i got excited about trying after reading this at the fabulous a practical wedding. the exercise: over the course of several conversations, we identified the values that we wanted to be present in our marriage, and then we tried to plan our wedding based on those values, too.
we had planned to have a similar set of values conversations before our daughter was born that would help guide us as we raise her, but she busted out a month early, and that exercise--like many other things on our "to do before baby" list--remains undone.
after reading the continuum concept and the new yorker article, though, i think we might need to make time for that conversation. here's a quote from the article: "what values do we convey by turning our homes into warehouses for dolls? by assigning our kids chores and then rewarding them when they screw up? by untying and then retying their shoes for them?"
we don't have a "warehouse of dolls" and we're nowhere near shoelaces-age yet, but the idea is important to me. and while i don't agree with everything in either reading, i do think this: we make so many small, in-the-moment decisions to try and do what's best for our kiddo, and those decisions would feel stronger to me if we had our personal list of values to measure them against.
so all of this talk so far is marriage- and kid-related, yes, but it gets me thinking about our busybusybusy, choice-choked adult lives of all kinds. do we need to be more explicit with ourselves about our values so that, at the very least, all that busybusybusy is spent in ways we really want to be spending our lives? has everyone else already done that except me? do you have a list of your values posted to your bathroom mirror or what?
7.08.2012
what s/he wrote
recently, leo babauta of zenhabits posted this: the wisdom of allowing things to happen. i was going to include an excerpt here, but it's a short-ish post, and i really want you to read it or at least skim it, so will you scoot over there and then come back, please?
okay, now that you're back: i love a lot of leo's work, but this one is hard for me. maybe it's hard in the way that things are most difficult to digest when you most need to hear them?
there's a big emphasis these days, in this culture, on being in control of your own destiny, on setting goals and pushing like hell to meet them--whether the goal is to make a gazillion dollars or to make a gazillion arts-and-crafts masterpieces with your six-year-old or to make a gazillion mosquito nets for malaria-ravaged communities in africa.
for a very long time, my own goals have been based on a picture that i have in my head of what my best life would look like. the edges are fuzzed out a bit, and there's a fill-in-the-blank hole here or there, but it's essentially there. it's not too crazy, and it's not too run-of-the-mill. it's just the perfect fit for me.
so i've been pushing and pushing at the parts and pieces of my actual life, trying to get it to turn into my perfect-vision-best life. it hasn't happened yet. stuff keeps jumping into my actual life that isn't part of perfect-vision-best life. some of that stuff sucks. but then, some of it is pretty dang awesome.
i'm fairly sure this actual-life stuff-jumping is going to keep happening, so now i'm wondering if maybe leo's approach might be good for me: allowing things to happen. i keep getting hung up in two places, though.
one: where's the line? at what point does "allowing things to happen" turn into "being a passive puppet who never really gives it her all?"
and two: in our culture, can women do this "allowing things to happen" like men can?
what do you think?
okay, now that you're back: i love a lot of leo's work, but this one is hard for me. maybe it's hard in the way that things are most difficult to digest when you most need to hear them?
there's a big emphasis these days, in this culture, on being in control of your own destiny, on setting goals and pushing like hell to meet them--whether the goal is to make a gazillion dollars or to make a gazillion arts-and-crafts masterpieces with your six-year-old or to make a gazillion mosquito nets for malaria-ravaged communities in africa.
for a very long time, my own goals have been based on a picture that i have in my head of what my best life would look like. the edges are fuzzed out a bit, and there's a fill-in-the-blank hole here or there, but it's essentially there. it's not too crazy, and it's not too run-of-the-mill. it's just the perfect fit for me.
so i've been pushing and pushing at the parts and pieces of my actual life, trying to get it to turn into my perfect-vision-best life. it hasn't happened yet. stuff keeps jumping into my actual life that isn't part of perfect-vision-best life. some of that stuff sucks. but then, some of it is pretty dang awesome.
i'm fairly sure this actual-life stuff-jumping is going to keep happening, so now i'm wondering if maybe leo's approach might be good for me: allowing things to happen. i keep getting hung up in two places, though.
one: where's the line? at what point does "allowing things to happen" turn into "being a passive puppet who never really gives it her all?"
and two: in our culture, can women do this "allowing things to happen" like men can?
what do you think?
7.01.2012
what s/he wrote
recently, seth godin wrote this blog post titled pest control.
in it, he says, "a big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention so you can do your work." i like that, and i think i might even say: a big part of doing your life is defending your time and attention so you can do your life.
right now, i'm in the beginning phases of some major streamlining: at home, at work, in my creative hours. and it is, indeed, hard to control the noise. with something demanding my attention all the time, i find i have to set some pretty firm boundaries for myself. i've limited my facebook time to 10 minutes a day. i don't watch or read the news unless something specific is important to me. i say no to invitations sometimes.
it feels strange to admit that i've chosen not to follow the news. and i have a really hard time saying no to invitations because i always think i'll be missing out. and just jumping on facebook for 10 minutes a day means i missed the announcement when a good friend's baby was born. but it means i have time to write for this blog. and it means i'm paying attention when i'm with my daughter instead of fooling around with my smartphone. and it means i have time to exercise--sort of. (i'm still working on that.)
i've got a lot more streamlining to do. and i'm curious: what boundaries do you set for "pest control"?
in it, he says, "a big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention so you can do your work." i like that, and i think i might even say: a big part of doing your life is defending your time and attention so you can do your life.
right now, i'm in the beginning phases of some major streamlining: at home, at work, in my creative hours. and it is, indeed, hard to control the noise. with something demanding my attention all the time, i find i have to set some pretty firm boundaries for myself. i've limited my facebook time to 10 minutes a day. i don't watch or read the news unless something specific is important to me. i say no to invitations sometimes.
it feels strange to admit that i've chosen not to follow the news. and i have a really hard time saying no to invitations because i always think i'll be missing out. and just jumping on facebook for 10 minutes a day means i missed the announcement when a good friend's baby was born. but it means i have time to write for this blog. and it means i'm paying attention when i'm with my daughter instead of fooling around with my smartphone. and it means i have time to exercise--sort of. (i'm still working on that.)
i've got a lot more streamlining to do. and i'm curious: what boundaries do you set for "pest control"?
6.24.2012
what s/he wrote
recently, amanda soule wrote this blog post titled out to pasture.
now, i'll admit, i often read the soulemama blog with not a small amount of envy over the soule family's seemingly ideal life. creativity and family and nature and handmade everything and so much love: it's easy to feel like i'm eating a big piece of jealous pie. but. soulemama has worked hard to prioritize these things in her life, and i was absolutely reminded of that when i read this post.
she and her family realized a big, awesome, dreamy project together because they didn't just dream about it. as she says, it's been a "great focus of our time these past (almost two!) years."
they've been working toward it, in a daily kind of way, bit by bit, for a looooong time. they didn't get distracted away from it for too long. they didn't give up a quarter of the way through and say it was too hard. they didn't try to do it all at once or all by themselves and burn out. and now they have something so cool.
and me? yes, i'm the girl who wrote a 30-page term paper, complete with extensive research, in a single night my senior year of college. but i'm also the girl who likes to rehearse new plays five days a week for eight weeks straight. and i'm the girl who is learning that bit by bit might just work better in other parts of my life, too.
i'm curious: are there projects--big or small--that you've made happen the bit-by-bit way?
now, i'll admit, i often read the soulemama blog with not a small amount of envy over the soule family's seemingly ideal life. creativity and family and nature and handmade everything and so much love: it's easy to feel like i'm eating a big piece of jealous pie. but. soulemama has worked hard to prioritize these things in her life, and i was absolutely reminded of that when i read this post.
she and her family realized a big, awesome, dreamy project together because they didn't just dream about it. as she says, it's been a "great focus of our time these past (almost two!) years."
they've been working toward it, in a daily kind of way, bit by bit, for a looooong time. they didn't get distracted away from it for too long. they didn't give up a quarter of the way through and say it was too hard. they didn't try to do it all at once or all by themselves and burn out. and now they have something so cool.
and me? yes, i'm the girl who wrote a 30-page term paper, complete with extensive research, in a single night my senior year of college. but i'm also the girl who likes to rehearse new plays five days a week for eight weeks straight. and i'm the girl who is learning that bit by bit might just work better in other parts of my life, too.
i'm curious: are there projects--big or small--that you've made happen the bit-by-bit way?
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