March’s theme at Life in Pencil is Beginnings

Posted by Elizabeth

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. “   — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ruminating.  In fact, I guess you could say I’ve been ruminating about ruminating.  So what, exactly, is rumination?  According to Depression’s Upside, a recent article in The New York Times Magazine by Jonah Lehrer, rumination is derived from the Latin word for “chewed over,” describing the act of digestion and regurgitation that cows go through.  While it’s kind of a gross image, it’s really effective in describing the mental process that we go through when we process and then reprocess information over and over (and over) again in our tired brains.  In its exaggerated state it’s the thought process that underlies depression, as rumination tends to “lead people to fixate on their flaws and problems, thus extending their negative moods.”  Some of us are more prone to rumination than others – I happen to be an ace ruminator – but I think all of us ruminate from time to time.  So how does rumination both help us and hurt us in our quest to live our lives in the now and make fresh starts?

Rumination is generally unproductive. I am planning a trip to Italy next month.  After spending a number of days researching different lodging options, my heart leapt when I discovered a boutique hotel that looked like something out of Roman Holiday.  After happily confirming our reservation, I spent the next two days rehashing the options, even adding new properties into the mix, finally convincing myself that I had made a poor initial choice.  After much prodding from Maikael, I eventually accepted the decision I made and moved on with my life.  But those intervening days?  A complete waste of my time.  According to Lehrer’s article, “rumination hijacks the stream of consciousness, and we become fixated on the perceived problem.”  Research has continually shown that “rumination is a useless kind of pessimism, a perfect waste of mental energy.”  So why do we do it?

Sometimes rumination is a good thing. Lehrer’s article explores the notion that rumination might actually have utility in our lives.  While rumination is undeniably unpleasant, it’s often exhibited in response to a real problem, such as the loss of a job or end of a relationship (I admit: my lodging dilemma was not a real problem, even though I perceived it to be at the time).  Some prevailing science suggests that rumination might help us to learn from our past or prepare for our future.  Before meeting with the perinatologist a few weeks ago, I was in a major ruminative cycle, projecting all sort of worse case scenarios onto my mental screen.  Had something been wrong, perhaps I would have been a little better prepared to deal with the fallout.  According to Lehrer, rumination underlies the ability to stay intensely focused on a problem for long periods of time and analytically break down those problems into small parts.  When I face a complex life problem, turning it over and over again in my head, studying it from every angle possible before deciding on a path forward, rumination can be my friend.

Rumination is the opposite of living in the now. While the scientific jury is still out as to the function of ruminating, when it comes to living life in pencil, rumination seems to do more harm than good.  The problem with rumination is that we spend our time replaying the past or projecting our worries into the future, rather than living in the present.  When we ruminate, each moment becomes a reenactment of the past or a dress rehearsal for the (unknown) future, robbing us of our opportunity to start anew.  So how do we ruminate less and live more?  I think there’s a lot of wisdom contained in that Emerson quote.

“Finish each day and be done with it.” I have a tendency to let the problems of the day leak over into the next.  Sometimes my dreams are plagued with bits and pieces of my ruminations, spilling forth the vestiges of my unfinished business and loose ends.  When I was little, my mom bought me a set of Guatemalan Worry Dolls, tiny woven figurines that nestled snugly in a little oval box.  The idea was to “assign” a specific worry to each doll before bedtime, letting them “hold” the worry until the morning.  Although I don’t use my worry dolls anymore, I sleep best when I truly get ready for bed (we’re not just talking teeth brushing here, people).  Taking my time to review the day on paper – be it through an email to a friend, a note in my journal, or simply scanning my day planner – helps me to put the day to rest and prepare for the next one.  (Anne’s gratitude journal could also come in handy here.)  I also benefit from make a conscious choice as to what problems are worth picking up tomorrow, and which ones I can let die with the day.  What doesn’t help is talking about my worries from the day as I lay in bed readying myself for sleep; for me, it lacks the “containment” of the other methods.

“Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely.” I don’t do a great job of easing myself into the day, and mornings are a hectic time for most of us.  Within the first five minutes of rising I turn on my cell phone, dash to my day planner to see what’s on the agenda for the day, and snap on the computer to check my email to see what crises have materialized or interesting news has transpired in the past eight hours.  It recently struck me that this is a particularly ugly way to prepare myself for a new day.  Those first moments of the day are precious, before the outside world has encroached.  Instead of throwing myself into activity, I could have a cup of tea, jot down creative ideas that have emerged overnight, do a few yoga stretches, talk with Maikael, or even make the bed.  Choosing just one of these activities that lasted no more than 10 minutes would be better than how I currently start my day, serving to help me ease into things rather than pick up right where I left off.  And maybe then I’d worry a little less about the problems of yesterday.

Do you tend to ruminate or not?  Do you have particular things that you ruminate about?  Do you agree or disagree that rumination has utility?  What strategies have you found helpful in allowing you to leave one day behind and start a new one afresh?

Posted by Anne

Life in Pencil is getting ready to go in a new direction.  We’re not quite yet ready to unveil our new plans, but, beginning this month, we’ll focus on a new topic every month.  Since March is the beginning of spring, a time of new life, this month’s theme will be Beginnings.  How do we live our lives in pencil during that tenuous time when there is new life on the horizon?

Last week, you made me think.  I wrote this post on my life-to-do-list, and several of you admitted similar moments of panic, and asked this question:

What happens when we’ve checked off the items?  What next?

A great question.  A particularly great question when glimmers of spring appear—when daffodils begin peeking through the dirt, and we (or at least I) feel called to begin any one of a jillion different projects. And just as I can generate lists and lists of projects to go along with my new Spring swagger, I can likewise think of about a million (or at least 10) things I’d like to do with my life.  When I truly consider the options for my future, there is no shortage of ideas.  Rather, an overwhelming abundance.  “Beginnings” are everywhere.  I’m sure many of you can relate, and there are probably many reasons I struggle with this unending array of interests.  But there’s one root cause that came to mind last week, after a particularly stimulating counseling session with an adorably enthused student.  As I walked him through the results of his personality assessment, I found myself resonating deeply.  And this is the part where I get all career counselor-y on you, but it’s relevant…I swear.

Remember the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?  If you weren’t around when I did my previous post on this ubiquitous personality test, then check this out—it’ll provide a little recap.  In that post, I wrote about that pesky part of my personality that’s very addicted to planning.  But last week, as I read your comments and listened to this young student, I realized there’s another part of my “type” (ENFJ to those of you who care) that’s becoming very Life in Pencil relevant these days.  So without further ado…

I’m an Extravert.

Now, pop culture totally screws up the whole “introvert/extravert” dichotomy.  Introverts are not necessarily shy (but sometimes are).  Extraverts are not necessarily loquacious social butterflies (but sometimes are…I’ve definitely got the loquacious part down.)  In actuality, a major difference between the types is where they get their energy.  Warning:  Massive overgeneralization of Myers Briggs Typology coming…Do you feel jazzed and refreshed after a stimulating presentation or conversation?  Extravert.  Do you feel exhausted and crave some major alone-time after you’ve been interacting with others all day?  Introvert.

But there’s another common quality of these types.  Introverts often have fewer interests, and even fewer friends…but really deep ones.  Extraverts?  We like to dabble in many interests, hobbies, and even relationships.  We’re broad.  And sometimes a little more shallow…at least when it comes to how deep we dive into these pursuits.

So…all those multiple interests of mine?  The fact that I can truly see myself pursuing several different options?  The part that’s a fan of beginning new projects?  It’s there—part of my personality.  Of course, maybe it has nothing to do with my personality, but it’s at least a theory.  And in some ways, I like this part of myself.  I believe there’s value in being a “Renaissance Woman”.  But I have to admit…when you’re obsessively calmly trying to craft a new “life-to-do-list”, this trait is also sort of a pain in the ass.  My broad interests regularly collide with the part of myself that’s craving sameness.  My quest for “beginnings” battles my internal need for stability.

I don’t have answers.  But I do have deep thoughts.  Here’s what I’ve realized…

Epiphany #1: This whole “planning your life” thing?  It’s hard when your interests veer in twenty different directions in the course of a single day.

Epiphany #2: Attempting to stick to one vocation is not only uncommon these days, the linear “path” may not fit me as well as I thought it would.

Epiphany #3: When I’m done checking off those massive items on my life to-do-list?  I’m never going to hurt for other options, other hobbies, other interests.  My extraverted personality will see to that.

Epiphany #4: Beginnings are a natural part of our life course, and they appear all the time.  The key is to embrace them, and let them work their magic.

How about you?  Regardless of the introvert/extravert piece of it, are you someone who dabbles in a lot of things?  Or do you maintain a steady few interests/pursuits?  Do you feel overwhelmed by options, or starving for them? Do you get a literal “spring” in your step when March rolls around?

Posted by Elizabeth

I’ll never forget the year I graduated from college, when well-meaning people began peppering me with the inevitable question that strikes fear in the heart of every senior.  “What are you going to do when you graduate?”  The fact was, other than a vague notion that I might move to New York and try to be an actor – with no concrete plan as to how to achieve that goal — I was clueless.  Much like Anne, my life had always fallen along neat timelines, and while my peers would have undoubtedly described me as “goal-oriented” — a phrase I’ve always despised — the fact was that, other than an ability to put one foot in front of the other, I didn’t have any goals.  I suddenly realized that the only item on life’s to-do list was “graduate from college,” which I was about to cross off.  Now what?

Since that uncertain spring ten years ago, my life has taken me down roads I never could have imagined for myself.  I owe part of the adventure to the fact that I’ve never clutched the traditional to-do list, with predetermined milestones to meet at specified times.  In fact, I don’t know if I ever had a life’s to-do list so much as a life’s to-don’t list. I was never interested in setting goals to get married, have children, buy a house, and establish a successful career. (While most of these things have inadvertently happened to me – isn’t that always the way? – they certainly didn’t fall along any self-imposed timelines or according to a plan, perhaps because you’re supposed to place your intention on what you do want rather than what you don’t want, lest the universe get confused and mix the whole thing up.)  While I was comfortable expressing what I didn’t want for my life, I struggled to place any goals on that to-do list.  Looking back, though, it’s clear that I was living my life according to a to-do list; in fact, it happens to be a version of the same one I clutch in my hands today.  It looks something like this:

1. Find spiritual enlightenment
2. Solidify my identity
3. Lead an interesting and exciting life full of mystery and adventure
4. Pursue a career that is the deepest reflection of my soul
5. Figure out my purpose on this earth

Yesterday, Anne and many of you readers expressed frustration at not knowing what to do or how to proceed now that you’ve checked off the major items on your to-do list.  But what do you do when you will never experience the satisfaction of crossing any of the items off your to-do list?  It took me a lot of years to understand that I did have goals – they just happened to be lifelong projects that are so esoteric and abstract that I will never have a chance to complete any of them.  If I could boil down this list into one goal, it would read, “Learn to be human.”  Because each of these goals is some version of learning to be a fuller, more complete being, a task that won’t be completed until the day I die.  Fantastic, huh?

Although Anne and I maintain different sorts of lists, I, too, struggle with the same feeling of foolishly waiting to arrive at “that place;” the location where the puzzle pieces finally fall perfectly into position and I am fully transformed.  I read somewhere once that you should only set goals that are achievable, attainable, and quantifiable; that large goals should be broken down into smaller “action items.”  While this isn’t really my style, I concede that having such mammoth, nebulous items on my life to-do list isn’t really helping me towards my ultimate goal of learning to live contentedly in the now as a fuller human being.  In other words, to live my life in pencil.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to take a closer look at what’s on my list, examine how these items got there in the first place, and determine if they even belong there.  Along the way I hope to change my relationship to the list, and maybe rewrite it all together.  If nothing else, I plan on making these five items a little more tangible and understandable – not just for me, but for you, dear reader.  It may seem a little silly – even antithetical — to create a list for something as tenuous as living in the now.  But we’ve got to start somewhere on our journey, right?  My hope is that we can teach each other not just the why but the how of living in the now (wow, that could be the slogan:  “The How of the Now”).

Do you maintain a to-do or a to-don’t list?  Are you interested in reexamining or rewriting your life’s to do (or to-don’t) list?  If so, in what way?  What ideas do you have for me as I set about creating more specific goals to live my life in the now?  What topics are YOU interested in surrounding this idea of living in the now?

In other news, my meeting with the specialist went great!  Thank you all for your encouraging words and concern.  As of now (and is there anything beyond what we have right now?), everything looks to be developing normally and healthy with The Blob.  Although, it looks much less like The Blob now.  Check out this latest sonogram!

Posted by Elizabeth

From time to time, the Internet connection at my house comes to a sputtering halt.  When that occurs, the following transpires:

1. I madly hit the “Refresh” button on my web browser and frown at the little “!” mark in the bottom right-hand corner of my laptop’s screen.
2. I call Maikael in a panic – sometimes in the other room, sometimes at work – who suggests I reset the router.
3. I nervously pull unmarked cords out of a little black box, not unlike a member of an inept bomb squad.
4. I hold my breath, waiting for the string of little green lights to begin their dance across the router once again, wondering what evil deed I performed in a past live to deserve this.  I begin making bargains with The Man Upstairs.
5. When the lights blink back on moments later I utter a genuine sigh of relief, do a little happy dance, and hop back on Facebook.

This is how it goes nine times of out ten.  But sometimes – sometimes! – the router refuses to reset.  Sometimes I call the cable company and there is no good answer as to what is wrong.  “You’ll just have to wait for it to start working again,” they hopefully offer.  When this happens, I nervously pace the room, wondering if it will be minutes, hours, or, god forbid, DAYS until I’m connected to the virtual world once again.  It’s times like these that I must walk myself off the ledge and remind myself that I didn’t use email until I went off to college.  Somehow I managed to lead a productive life for 18 years without the help of the Internet.  Certainly, I reason with myself, I can go 18 hours without being connected.

I freely admit that the “important” task that a failed Internet connection interrupts typically involves email or a social networking site.  And yet, as unreasonable as it sounds, this temporary failure of technology feels monumental, sending me into a tailspin.  It looks like I’m not the only one who feels this way.  According to a recent article on technological failures, “when gadgets let us down, we feel frustrated, stumped, upset, scared, we feel stupid, like we did something to mess it up, and we feel helpless…Those are all the same feelings you have when you are depressed.”  In other words, when we become dependent upon something that fails us, without any clear answers, our sense of order crumbles.

My theory?  “Technoflubs” remind us of how little control we have over our lives.  Not only do we lack the control to make the technology perform 100% of the time, we usually lack the skills to fix them when something goes wrong.  We are at the mercy of our gadgets:  what could make a person feel more helpless?  Like most things in life, our expectations are inflated.  It’s unreasonable to expect that devices will always work, and yet we become completely despondent when they fail.  Last night I was downloading a song from the iTunes Store and, with five seconds of download time remaining, the connection mysteriously came to an abrupt halt.  I spent the next 30 minutes trying to resume the connection, madly pressing buttons and sighing audibly.  I blamed myself for trying to plug my iPod into the computer during the download process, which had obviously caused some sort of cosmic interference.  (“Isn’t it possible that the iTunes Store is simply down?” asked Maikael.  Impossible.)  Finally, Maikael said, “Why don’t you just go to bed and try again in the morning?”  Even when I realized that I was trying to will something into existence, I literally had to tear myself away from the computer.

Lately, I’ve become acutely aware of not just my overdependence on but addiction to technology.  As you may have gathered, my specific Achilles heel happens to be email and Facebook.  Except when I am sleeping or away from my computer – which isn’t very often – I am constantly connected to both of these virtual worlds.  And I don’t like it.  This addiction has surprised me, because I wouldn’t classify myself as an escapist or a technology fetishist.  Normally I prefer to live my life grounded in reality.  I think, for me, both of these modes of technology represent staying in touch, an especially important task with so much of my support network spread across the globe.  While I can’t see myself eliminating either of these technologies from my life, I could stand to drastically limit my time on the Internet.  After all, I can still stay in touch without being in touch.  I know this.  I’ve made all sorts of sophisticated plans with myself to reduce my usage, and I’m usually good at achieving a goal that I’ve set my mind on.  But with this particular issue?  I haven’t made a lick of progress.

Life in Pencil is all about rewriting your life in the way you’d like it to read, and this is something that I’d really like to change.  Perhaps if I reframe this as a habit rather than an addiction it would be easier to tackle?  They say that habits take 21 days to change, but I know myself better than that.  Although I am not a particularly religious person, I am going to use the starting and ending points of Lent, a symbolic time in which we focus on our temptations, to carry out my plan in earnest.  Lent begins next Wednesday, so that gives me a week to prepare and 46 days to accomplish my goal.  Next Tuesday I’ll bring to you my personal “rules” for the Technoless Challenge.  And, if anyone else is interested in taking the same challenge, leave a comment and let me know.  Or, if you have another “temptation” or bad habit that you’d like to address over the same period, let me know that, too.  I have some ideas brewing…

Here are some interesting blog entries and articles on the effects of technology dependence:

Kristen @ Motherese wrote about real versus virtual connection in Are We Tuning Out By Tuning In?
Nikki @ Generation V wrote about her own technology addiction in This Virtual Life
And of course there’s the article that inspired this post in Why So Much FAIL in the Digital World?

Guess what, folks? Phase One of The Waiting Game is coming to its exciting conclusion!  Tune in FRIDAY for the dramatic – and it is dramatic – reveal.  I promise this is not a shameless ploy.

Posted by Elizabeth

When I heard that Elizabeth Gilbert had written a new book, I was nervous.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Committed, which picks up where Eat Pray Love leaves off, chronicling her difficult decision to marry Felipe, the man she literally sails off into the sunset with at the end of the story.  There was no way this book could ever live up to EPL, for I am one of those women – and I know there are many of us – for whom EPL changed my life.  Although Maikael and I had already been toying with the idea of taking eight months out of our life to embark on a journey of self-discovery around the world, EPL sealed the deal for me.  Inspired by her tale, we even spent two weeks lapping up life and culture in Ubud, Bali, which she details in such a mesmerizing way.  For me, Gilbert’s prose captured what I was feeling but was unable to put into words at that time in my life, feelings about being caught between a conventional and unconventional life, about being unsure what I wanted from life, about not knowing who I was or what made me happy in the slightest.  As different as our lives were – I was ten years her junior and not considering divorce – I identified with Liz Gilbert.

But I know not everyone felt this way.  When my former bookclub read Eat Pray Love, our group was fiercely divided by equal amounts of adoration and dislike of the book.  Some felt her journey was trite, her head inflated, her love story too tidy and saccharine.  Other just simply didn’t “get it,” which was unfathomable to me, who had found such connection and solace in the book.  As I traveled around the globe, the subject of the book often came up in conversations with fellow explorers (it really was a worldwide phenomenon), and, even amongst the highly self-selecting group of long-term travelers, the division of opinions was just as acute.  Love it or hate it, the book clearly made people feel something.

However, when I learned that Elizabeth Gilbert was coming to town – and that $35 could buy me two tickets and a hardback copy of the book – I was Committed.  So last Wednesday night, me and 500 fellow Liz Gilbert fans, including my former therapist, filed into an expansive ballroom at the University of New Mexico, which was stuffed to the gills with conference seating and estrogen.  The audience was one loud hum, buzzing with the anticipation of a cultural icon about to speak.  But a loud hush fell over the room as soon as Elizabeth Gilbert stepped to the stage, a flowy grey cardigan draped over her thin frame, her tousled blond hair pulled away from her face in a messy twist, a genuine smile etched on her face.

For the next 30 minutes she talked about the process of writing Committed, which represents the fruits of her second attempt to write a follow-up book to EPL. She spent two years writing a 500-page manuscript…and then threw the entire thing away. As she spoke these words, I’m pretty sure I heard myself groan audibly.  I’ve never written anything 500 pages in length, but I’ve written something a tenth of the size, and even throwing that away is vomit-inducing.  Gilbert discussed how difficult it was to ditch the manuscript, one in which she had received a considerable advance from her publisher and who, after two years of work, was soon expecting a publishable book.  “But the book was horrible,” she said.  “It wasn’t ‘me.’  It wasn’t written in my voice.  It was written in the voice of who I thought I should be after the success of Eat Pray Love.”  Her best bet, she reasoned, was to take six months off to figure out the follow-up book she was meant to write.  In the meantime she gardened.  And one day, with her fingers dug hard into the soft earth, a single sentence – the sentence that was to become the opening line to the book – simply came to her.

Late one afternoon in the summer of 2006, I found myself in a small village in northern Vietnam, sitting around a sooty kitchen fire with a number of local women whose language I did not speak, trying to ask them questions about marriage.

From there she “took the sentence for a walk across the page,” and proceeded to pen Committed in a mere two months.

While not all of us have the luxury of time or literary advances, as I sat in that overheated ballroom, surrounded by a sea of like-minded New Mexicans, it dawned me on me what a powerful lesson her process presented for living a life in pencil.   There is nothing more important in this life than learning to be YOU – whoever you are.  In fact, is it even something we should have to learn? If we are skilled and equipped to be anything, it’s to be ourselves.  And yet, how difficult it can be to discover and then speak our voice, whether we are writers or not.  It shouldn’t be easier to be someone else, but that is often the case.  Borrowing someone else’s tastes, pleasures, preferences, and aversions is a simple game of mimicry; to truly face who we are, and not who we think we should be, is a lifelong project.

When we are living a life that isn’t attuned to who we are, it’s been my experience that things take forever to manifest themselves.  Everything feels like a Sisyphean task, making it difficult to differentiate between sheer hard work towards a difficult goal and being engaged in the “wrong” thing.  The difference, I think, is that when we are living a life attuned to who we are, things come more easily, more quickly.  While there are bumps in the road, setbacks, and hard uphill battles, the effort feels purposeful.  We feel a deep sense that, while the path is bumpy, it’s the right path to be traveling down.  No amount of construction can reshape the wrong path.

While we talk often here at Life in Pencil about making changes within the parameters of our existing lives, Gilbert’s story teaches us that sometimes life requires us to start over.  If a plan is born from a place that doesn’t feel true or authentic, no amount of “editing” is going to make it right.  Sometimes, major revisions are required.  Sometimes, we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Sometimes, we have to start from scratch.  When Gilbert threw away that first draft, without another story idea in sight, she was facing a problem that needed to be solved, a puzzle of the highest order.  “A puzzle,” she said, “is just a crisis with the volume knob turned down.”  But rather than panicking, she trusted that time – and a vegetable garden – would eventually bring order to the puzzle.  “Problems are like cheap underwear,” a Buddhist monk friend once told her.  “Eventually they wear themselves out.”

And it’s true, isn’t it?  Over time, even the most pernicious problems wear themselves dull and raw, until we genuinely wonder what we were ever worried about in the first place.  Such was the case with Gilbert’s book, and such may be the case with any dilemma, crisis, or life change that you might be facing.  Sometimes, the best thing we can do is take a break and trust that the process will work itself out.  I have always believed that the only way out is through.  Whether we are talking about a failed book project, a career crisis, or a relationship gone awry, there is no easy shortcut or “work around” (as my computer programming husband would say).  We need those seemingly impossible puzzles, those failed attempts, to push us through to the other side.

Just last week I was cleaning out my office, and I discovered a draft of the first essay I had ever written nearly six years ago.  Back then, I was a graduate student in counseling psychology, and a career in writing was the furthest thing from my mind.  And yet, much like Elizabeth Gilbert, I was drying my hair one morning before school when a single line popped into my head.  I immediately scrambled to write it down, and proceeded to skip my morning classes – which I never did – to write an entire essay, which tumbled forth from that one line.  I wasn’t sure where this line had come from, or where it was going, but two years later I submitted that essay to a local writers’ conference.  I remember feeling very proud of my effort, a reflection of the best I could produce at the time.  But reading this essay six years later, while there are lines that are still gems, it struck me that it just wasn’t very good!  The ideas are there, but the execution is sloppy, amateur.  It dawned on me how much I have grown as a writer in that time span, but how necessary it was to write those first stumbling drafts on my way through to becoming a writer.  And when I read this post in another six years, I’m sure I’ll be struck by the same thought.

Gilbert’s friend, an artist, often reminds her, “The creative product is the unidentical twin of the dream you had in your head.”  In other words, what we produce while pursuing the creative process – be it writing a book, baking a pie, or even living life itself – is often a flawed copy of the perfect image we held in our head when we conceived the idea.  It seems to me that the purpose isn’t to create a facsimile but to simply chase after that image to the best of our abilities.  Whatever we produce will never be as perfect as we’d hoped.  But with time and experience, I think our image and the real thing grow closer together.  Just like Gilbert’s book, this blog, as imperfect as it is, couldn’t exist without that first humble essay.  And whatever goal you are working towards in your life couldn’t be accomplished without whatever fumbling efforts you are making right now.

Are you a fan of Eat, Pray, Love (or not)? Have you read Committed?  What lessons do you take away from Gilbert’s process that I have missed?  Do you think that sometimes starting over is the best thing?

Posted by Elizabeth

Dreamy, steamy, or creepy?

Confession:  I used to be a major American Idol fan. During the first six seasons, I never missed a single episode – and if you know the amount of hours that show occupies on the airwaves between January and May each year, you know that’s a major time commitment.  In fact, AI (that’s what real fans call it, you know: AI) was one of the first mutual passions/grotesque fascinations/guilty pleasures that Anne and I shared.  Our obsession reached a fever pitch in graduate school, AI providing a balm to our weary souls.  (Anne and I have a theory that the level of seriousness in your television programming has a direct, inverse correlation to the level of stress and anxiety in your daily work life.  Needless to say, graduate school was prime AI territory.)  I would call Anne during commercial breaks, and we’d recap what had just happened in the previous 15-minute segment, ogling Constantine Maroulis’ dreamy hair and hypnotic smile, while laughing hysterically at John Steven’s infamous falsetto version of Crocodile Rock.  When I moved away, our debriefs continued via letter, and we filled pages (yes, I admit, pages) predicting winners and losers and dissecting Kristy Lee Cook’s hoe-down version of Eight Days a Week.

But at some point along the way, we got a life lost interest.  Eventually, AI faded into the background, and I’d be hard-pressed to tell you much about anything that’s transpired the past three seasons.  When I returned from my ‘round-the-world trip last March, smack dab in the middle of season eight, everyone was talking about Adam Lambert, the rumored favorite.  Already feeling like a cultural pariah after eight months off the map, I decided to increase my pop culture IQ by tuning into a few episodes.  True to reports, Lambert was interesting and edgy (or at least as edgy as AI allows you to be), a strong singer and great performer to boot.  And, as is so often the case with the AI franchise, the best contestant doesn’t win, the winner fades into obscurity, and the runner-up shoots to meteoric fame.

Yesterday I was watching Oprah (what else is there to do when you’re playing The Waiting Game?), and the theme of the show was “Big Breaks,” featuring Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert.  To be honest, I wasn’t very interested in either guest, but, like I said, what else is there to do when you’re playing The Waiting Game?  But what followed was a surprisingly interesting interview with Mr. Lambert who, by my estimation, is an articulate young man with a solid head on his shoulders.  What interested me most about his story was how a musical theatre performer had managed to refashion himself as a glam rocker on American Idol without being accused of “selling out” or “not knowing himself” (for those uninitiated, AI judges LOVE to slap those labels on contestants)?

A few years ago, Lambert reported, he wanted to “make something happen” in his life.  He was bored, but unsure exactly how he wanted his life to be different – he didn’t have any specific goals he wanted to achieve or milestones to reach – but he was clear that he wanted it to change.  He began by simply asking The Universe to bring something new into his life.  For awhile he did nothing but think about the change.  In a process that he calls “positive projection,” he would imagine in his head how his life might be different.  “And then I took action,” he said, auditioning for American Idol on a whim, unsure if the show would respond to his “left-of-center” aesthetic and unusual background.  The rest, as they say, is history, but even Lambert concedes that how this dream manifested itself is far bigger than he ever believed it would be.

So what does all of this have to do with living life in pencil?  This is a very roundabout way to get at a very simple point:  big changes often have very humble beginnings.  Sometimes we feel we need something to be different in our life, but we’re unsure what that “something” is.  In our goal-oriented culture, where specific objectives hold more cache than vague urges, I think we often shy away from change unless we have something specific in mind that we want to be different.  When I worked as a career counselor, I sometimes caught myself falling into this pervasive mindset, telling my clients, for example, that it was fruitless to begin a job search until they knew what they were searching for.  But Adam Lambert’s story seems to suggest the contrary.  In his version of change, we need only be specific in our intention that we want things to be different somehow – defining what that change is isn’t part of the equation.  That’s the part we leave up to The Universe.  And isn’t there something liberating in that?  For many of us, we won’t make even the smallest nudge towards change until our goal is 100% clear.  But my fear is that we might get stuck waiting a lifetime.

The other key point of Lambert’s “model” is he met thinking with doing.  Just a few days ago I wrote about “doing something” versus “doing nothing” when you’re faced with an existential crisis – the kind of crisis Lambert faced just over a year ago.  Lambert’s life change came about through equal parts doing and being.  After he’d spent some time thinking about the changes, he knew that nothing would transpire without action on his part.  He didn’t know at the time if American Idol was the answer – it could easily not have been – but taking action kept him moving forward.  Most of us prefer being or doing, but that only brings us halfway there; clearly, Lambert shows us we need both.  But even a combination of being and doing won’t get us to our destination if our intention isn’t clear, pure, and true.  When pure intent meets a clear vision and strong action, The Universe provides in ways that are bigger than we ever could have imagined for ourselves.  All change, no matter how big or how small, begins with an intention, no matter how specific or vague.

Who says that American Idol is worthless – there’s obviously plenty of life lessons to be learned!  What have you learned about change, success, or risk-taking from American Idol, your favorite television programs, or other pop culture outlets?  Are you, or have you ever been, a huge American Idol fan? What do you think of Lambert’s “model” of change?  Don’t be hatin’ on pop culture, y’all!

Posted by Elizabeth

Some days I sit down to write a blog post and I know exactly what I’m going to say.  Other days the well is dry.  But on days like today my head is swimming with topics, and I struggle to pick just the right one.  I could write about Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses, which I finished late last night, offering plenty of lessons and wisdom about living a life in pencil.  I could write about my new friend Evelyn and our unusual bilingual relationship.  I could write about our do-it-yourself bathroom remodel project, or Malcolm Gladwells’ Blink, or the fact that life is trying to teach me a lesson about patience these days.  I think all of these would make fine topics – in fact, you might see some of them in the coming weeks – but what’s really tugging at my attention today is this:

Existential crises.

If you know me, you know I talk a lot about existential crises.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I invented the term – I’m sure it came from someone in the existential school of thought — but I don’t recall where I heard it and I use the phrase a great deal, so I’m claiming it as my own for the purposes of this post.  What is an existential crisis, and how does it differ from your run-of-the-mill crisis?  You know you’re in the midst of an existential crisis when you wake up one day and begin asking yourself Life’s Big Questions.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Unlike your everyday crisis, you probably find that your life looks completely fine from the outside looking in.  Whereas most ordinary crises are propelled from external sources – you lose a job, a house, a relationship – existential crises are purely internal; this is what makes them so hard to pinpoint and easy to dismiss.  Everything looks fine, but nothing feels fine.  But trust me when I say that an existential crisis is just as serious as any other kind.

One of my favorite pastimes is to go around and diagnose my friends with an existential crisis.  Because I have faced my fair share of existential crises, I consider myself uniquely qualified to hand out these proclamations.  Just a few weeks ago, my friend, Emily, admitted that she was casting about aimlessly, wondering what life project she should tackle next.  I told her without hesitation that she was clearly in the midst of an existential crisis.  She reported that the diagnosis made her feel better because “it made my slothy blahs sound more intelligent. “  And that’s just the thing:  it’s easy to mistake an existential crisis for a lack of motivation.  And what’s the answer, at least in our culture, to inertia and uncertainty?  We should do something!

It’s then that we get into the sticky wicket of working ourselves through an existential crisis.  Is the answer to do something or to do nothing?  If we choose the former, how do we go about putting the answers to such monumental questions into action?  If we choose the latter, how do we keep the process moving forward without succumbing to a lifetime of sitting in a wingback chair in a velvet smoking jacket, just thinking? Because we are a culture that tends to value tangible results, productivity, and active doing, I think most of us tackle our existential crises by springing to action.  We immediately formulate a plan, something that will provide a quick answer, and then set about accomplishing it.  But if we haven’t taken the proper time and rest to formulate that plan, to let the existential ground lie fallow for a time, we often find ourselves weeks, months, or even years down the road asking the same questions.

There’s a lot of benefit to doing nothing – at least for awhile – because most of us rarely take the time to do so.  It’s difficult and uncomfortable to sit with our existential problems, waiting for answers to emerge, especially if we’re “doers” by nature.  We might feel as if we’re wasting precious time; we might feel lazy; we might wonder if this “doing nothing” is actually accomplishing anything.  Usually it is, but like the existential crisis itself, the forward movement is often imperceptibly small, invisible to the naked eye, and completely internal.  If we can’t see change happening, we might wonder if anything is really changing.  This approach takes a great deal of trust.  And sometimes it’s not always the answer.  Sometimes, in our effort to do nothing, we end up lying down and never getting back up again.

The answer, I think, is to make doing “nothing” an active process.  By its very definition it’s easy to reduce “doing nothing” to sitting on your duff waiting for life to happen and the answers to emerge.  This brand of “doing nothing” rarely works (unless you are “existentially tired”*, in which case sitting on your duff for a good, long while might be just the cure).  Instead, if we approach the act of doing nothing as an exploratory process, in which we are not manically seeking The Next Plan but inspiration, “doing nothing” can quickly feel like we’re “doing something.”  There are all sorts of ways we can actively explore our world without compulsively searching for plans, answers, and concrete action.  For example, Emily sat down to an inspiring dinner with a new friend, who helped stoke her creative fires without hammering out The Next Big Thing.  Why does this work?  Because the aim of this action is exploratory, rather than producing tangible outcomes, and there’s nothing more exciting that exploration at a time like this.

When you find yourself in the midst of an existential crisis, I am a proponent of doing what you have energy for, what excites you, what piques your curiosity, because I truly believe the answers are contained somewhere within those ideas.  It’s a great time to broaden your social circle, to invite new ideas into your life.  If you have the energy to do so, it’s a great time to say “yes” to things; you never know what new opportunities you never could have predicted are waiting on the horizon.

*Existential crises are often related to being “existentially tired” – a term I’m pretty sure I did invent – wherein you are not physically but emotionally exhausted.

Do you fall more into the “do nothing” or “do something” camp when you find yourself at a cross-roads?  What techniques have you found particularly useful when tackling your own existential crises?

Posted by Anne

Tomorrow is my 30^th birthday.  The birthday that’s been explored in movies, television, greeting cards, and self-help books.  The big 3-0.

And truthfully, I can’t say I’m all that concerned.  Life is sprinkled with these “milestone” birthdays—birthdays that signal to us that it’s time to feel a specific emotion.  Perhaps because I’ve never felt exactly my age, I’ve never really experienced the culturally appropriate emotions that come with these milestone birthdays.  Let’s consider…

• Age 13: I became a teenager.  This was supposed to be exciting.  Inside, I was really not a fan of growing up. Being a “teenager” just sounded stressful to me.
• Age 16:  Okay, yes, I was excited to start driving.  One birthday that meant everything it was supposed to.
• Age 18:  Becoming an “adult”.  This one?  Yeah, very anticlimactic.  Since I had no real desire to smoke cigarettes and already felt like a 25-year-old in an 18-year-old body, the drama was lost on me.  For my party that year, I saw Titanic with a bunch of girlfriends. Is that embarrassing?   A little.
• Age 21:  Legal purchaser of alcohol.  Kinda feels like there should be something else to this one, doesn’t it?

Not me, but certainly could be.

I’ve moved through these birthdays, always celebrating, and never truly feel much different than I did the day before.  But I wonder if birthdays will change as I continue to grow older.  Up to now, all those milestone birthdays have been about the expectation of something new.  The excitement of achieving a special status, a special privilege.  Turning 30 seems to place you in a different category.  It’s the first time I’ll see greeting cards that make jokes about my age—the first time I’ll experience a milestone birthday that’s more about something ending (youth, presumably) than something beginning.

And yet, despite this shift in the tone of Hallmark birthday cards, 30 is one of the first birthdays (in the past several years) that I’ve truly anticipated. Call me crazy, but I’m actually excited for this one, folks.  There are certainly days when I feel like a perpetual 25-year-old, pretending at this thing called adulthood.  But most of the time?  I feel like I’ve been 30 forever—and my age is finally catching up with my soul inside.

30 truly does mark a milestone, and it’s not just about the foray into “getting older”.  For those heading down the traditional “buy a house, start a family” path, it seems that 30 is the signal to get started.  Of course, this doesn’t appeal to everyone.  It’s probably frustrating to many.  And truly there should be no “timeline” for such life changes.  But to me?  You bet…it’s darn appealing.  And so this birthday—so often portrayed as the end of youth—feels more like a beginning to me.  The beginning of a new phase of life.

But there’s also a challenge buried beneath my excitement.  This new decade of life awakens that obsessive planner inside me.  I may be at the cusp of a new beginning, but I hope to approach it with calmness and flexibility.  So perhaps I will try to say goodbye to my 20’s after all.  I’ll say goodbye to planning my life before it happens, and will practice the ability to let it just unfold.  And that would be a true sign of maturity.  I hope I succeed. 

How did it feel to turn 30?  Did you dread it, or welcome it?  Or somewhere in-between?

Posted by Anne

“Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table and your bottom on the chair and start sweating.  Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts.  That’s called inspiration.”
-Carlos Ruiz Zafon, from The Angel’s Game

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from blogging, it’s that you can’t plan inspiration.  You have to find it.  I used to imagine that writing was something one did in the heat of a beautiful or captivating thought.  Inspiration strikes, and you follow it with your pen or keyboard.  You capture the intensity of that shot of verbal brilliance, and the rest is history.  Oh, how I wish that were always the case. 

It’s not that I don’t feel inspired—often I do.  And those are the moments when I truly want to write something—when I can feel the urgency taking charge of my words.  It’s that urgency that drives the construction of each sentence, and the selection of each adjective.  They are wonderful moments, those moments of inspiration.  But I have to admit—just as often (or more often), I find my writing process best described by the quote at the top of this post.  It’s not until I sit down to just write that I begin to feel the murmur of inspired thoughts and words. 

Perhaps this is why a blogging “schedule” generally works for me.  Elizabeth and I alternate our days, giving me a very clear awareness of which days are “my blogging days” and which are hers.  I know when to stop waiting for inspiration to find me, and when to just plant myself in front of the computer and stare until I find the words I need.  I enjoy this process—of putting my fingers to the keyboard and pushing my brain to grind and work. Except…

Except there are some days—believe it or not—when I just don’t feel particularly thoughtful.  These are the days when a long walk seems like the most appealing activity in the world, and when I can’t bear the thought of forcing my words.  I don’t feel inspired, and I don’t want to seek inspiration either.  I just want to be.  I have all sorts of strategies for combating these inspirational black holes. 

• I take a break, and write when I’m fresh.  (This worked in college too…hence some very odd study hours for a 21-year-old…generally 5:00am.) 
• I’m never afraid to scrap a subject when the words don’t come.  (If a topic feels stale to me, chances are it’ll feel stale to you too.) 
• I consult my running list of possible blog topics. (Do I even need to explain why this appeals to me?)

And yet…with all these strategies, I believe there’s still nothing that replaces those true moments of creative productivity.  When you lose time, find your flow, and allow the words to seamlessly work their way onto the screen or the page.  And this is why I find my writing “schedule” both wonderfully productive, and likewise frustrating.  Sometimes I wish I could just drink tea until the spirit moved me to write.  But I know…deep down…I’d succumb to the laziness of waiting for that inspiration.  And so, I must trust that it will find me eventually.  In the meantime, I pick myself up, sit myself down at my desk, look at the screen, and begin to squeeze. 

Do you have a creative outlet?  Do you wait for inspiration, or do you find discipline helps you create?

Anne is currently vacationing in Chile, so while she’s gone I’m taking over a few of her blogging days.  I’ll be covering MWF for the next two weeks.

Posted by Elizabeth

When I was in college, I had a friend.  I’ll call her “H.”  H. and I had a lot in common.  We were both drama majors who were interested in academic pursuits.  We were both singers.  We shared similar temperaments, found ourselves in many of the same classes, and, as a consequence, spent a lot of time together during a brief period of our college years.  We were so similar, in fact, that, under certain circumstances, we probably could have been best friends.  The only problem was that H. did everything just a little better than me.  H. enthusiastically told me about the paper she was publishing with one of our drama professors, based on an essay she had written for class.  After being promised a role in a show, I discovered a few months later that H. was given the part instead.  And not only did she sing better than me, but she was a dancer, too.  What evolved was a skewed dynamic, wherein I tried (and failed) to be just as good at her at all of these things, leading to a relationship founded in equal parts admiration and jealousy.

Our strange friendship came to a head when I discovered that, the previous summer, she had worked as a new student orientation leader on our campus, the very job I had considered the previous summer, but quickly dismissed because I had determined I wasn’t that interested in it.  But as soon as I learned that she had been an orientation leader, I immediately decided to apply for the next summer.  This time, H., as a returning staff member, would be on the selection committee.  I figured I’d be a shoe-in.  I ran the gauntlet of an exceedingly long application and interview process, and waited anxiously for the job offer — which never came.  When I ran into H. on campus a few days after receiving the news, I asked her point blank why I hadn’t gotten the job.  “You weren’t the best person,” she said, simply, to which I turned on my heels, made my way over the brick-lined square at the center of campus, and began crying.  I never saw H. again.

My whole life I’ve struggled to create my own path in this world.  I’ve played copycat with careers, schools, clothing styles, exercise routines, home decorating, travel locations, wedding plans, and food choices.  All too often, I observe someone I admire – someone who appears happy, successful, and achieving the things I want for my own life — and try my hardest to follow in their path, convinced I will see the same results for myself.  Instead, I follow their footsteps and am surprised and confused when it doesn’t turn out the same for me.  It took me a lot of years to figure out that it didn’t turn out the same for me because it wasn’t my path to follow.  Quite simply, there’s nothing wrong with setting out with the same destination in mind, but when we try to follow the same route to get there, we probably won’t be met with the same results when we arrive.

In a culture where we tend to revere the unique, special, and different, I wonder why this has been such a difficult lesson for me to learn?  Part of the answer, I think, is that we’re encouraged to create a unique destination more than a unique path to get there.  But with so many of us pursuing similar goals, I can’t help but believe that we’d learn more if we were taught to approach the journey, rather than the destination, in our own way.  When I traveled around the world, I found myself in the midst of so many people who were doing the same thing I was: circumnavigating the globe in some way, shape, or form.  We would swap tales of different travel destinations, and when someone would tell me how great the beaches were here, or the mountains were there, I immediately found myself rewriting my itinerary in my head.  And sometimes I’d go to these places, and usually be immediately disappointed when I arrived.  Why?  Because I was literally following someone else’s path, not mine.  The best times I had on the trip, the times I felt most like myself, were when I figured out the route on my own.  And most of the time, it was based not on what someone had told me that I’d like, but what I knew on some intuitive level that I’d like – inspired by photos I’d seen or an article I’d read or something even more ephemeral that simply spoke to me.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if we’re given a lot of opportunities to figure out what our path is.  Sometimes I feel as if the world is bombarding me from the outside in.  There are constant Facebook status updates to remind me of other people’s success stories.  I don’t need to bother figuring out my favorite things, because Oprah already has a list of her “Favorite Things” at the ready.  There are how-tos and guidebooks for everything, coaches who advise us with neatly outlined steps, all to keep us from — horror of horrors! — fumbling about on our own and discovering our own path.  Every day we are inundated with a million examples of how to go about accomplishing anything we can dream of, but the encroachment of all those outside voices makes it very difficult to hear the only voice that really matters:  our own.

So what’s the solution?  In the spirit of this very topic I suspect it’s different for everyone, but this year I’d like to work on creating my own path in life.  My goals aren’t terribly unique, but I’d like to create a path this is clearly of my own design.  So here’s my plan:

1. I will spend less time in the virtual world tuning into what others are doing, and spend more time in the real world tuned into what I’m doing.
2. Each time I find myself falling into step with someone whose life I admire, I will stop myself before traveling too far down the path and honestly ask myself, “Will this path work for me?  Is there a different way I could go about doing this that would resonate with me more?”
3. I will focus more on the journey than the destination.
4. I will recognize the differences as much as the similarities between my path and others.
5. I will continue to look to those I admire, gaining inspiration, rather than verbatim direction, from their unique way of being in the world.  (Ironically, the people I admire most are often those who have created their own path.)

I haven’t thought about H. in nearly 10 years, but what I realize in retrospect is that we weren’t all that similar.  In fact, we were probably more different than we were alike.  But at that time, on the cusp of adulthood and desperately searching for a path of my own, it was easy to see so much of myself in her, to want to travel the same seemingly successful path she was.   If it worked for her, why couldn’t it work for me?  Of course I had it all wrong.  But looking back, I’m glad she forced me off the path, stumbling into the dark on my own.  Somebody had to.