Creative Calling is an incredible book. Chase Jarvis, founder of CreativeLive, shares everything he knows about creativity, building a life as a working artist, and dealing with failure, procrastination, and resistance. It feels like the sort of book you could just keep next to you as you work, occasionally touching the cover for reassurance.
Our culture somehow values all kinds of creative work with massive amounts of money, fame, and material support, while also doing its best to browbeat creative impulses out of people. I live in Southern California, and frequently visit Las Vegas, Nevada, and what both of these areas have in common is that they reliably churn out billions of dollars of entertainment sales. Working in the arts has the highest ceiling of almost any field. Yet we’re trained to doubt ourselves and feel that working in a creative field is unrealistic. “Don’t quit your day job.” It’s nuts. A young artist repeated some of this pushback to me. We happened to be standing in the middle of Powell’s Books, a veritable temple of proof that writing pays. She didn’t think she could make a living as the extremely talented illustrator that she already is. I waved my arm around in a wide circle, pointing out that tens of thousands of books and products around us all, each and every one, had a professionally designed cover. Where do they come from? Even humdrum consumer products still have art on the label. Proof is all around us and we still struggle to believe that art is work. I have two pieces of advice for hopeful creatives. One. Don’t tell naysayers about your projects. Two. Read Creative Calling. When in doubt, repeat. Favorite quotes: Choosing to pursue every creative interest is equivalent to abandoning them all. Who says you can’t do those things? And what have those naysayers ever done themselves? When artists can’t figure out how to pay the bills, we all lose. Your life is not a democracy. Productivity has become a self-help institution that deals with the symptoms rather than the cause of our problems. What you’re really struggling with is the willingness to value as-yet-unmade work. If you want to understand your true priorities, look at two things: your calendar and your bank statement. All you have to do is follow instructions and do the work. Something weird has been happening on Words With Friends. I wonder if it’s just me. If I were an investigative journalist, I would undoubtedly dive in and make a little documentary about it. I’m lazy, though, and that’s not my beat. Maybe I’ll just do a little humor piece instead.
Mine is a Scrabble family. Both of my grandmothers were tile queens, basically unbeatable with their eighty-point plays. I grew up around the board. My aunties invited me to play as soon as I could write basic three-letter words, and they beamed with pride when I laid down my first legit move. My brothers and I initiated my nephew the same way, allowing him to keep score for our games with his sprawling numerals when he was still too little to spell. That’s why I play Words With Friends. It’s a way to reach out to distant family. I’d quit playing for a couple of years; I lost heart when my grandmother passed away and all my games timed out. I challenged my brother to a game for the first time in quite a while. I didn’t intend to play anyone else. I started getting all kinds of game requests from strangers, typically five a day. It didn’t take me long to notice a couple of things. One, they were all white men roughly 5-20 years older than me. Two, they all wanted to chat, which, no offense, I hate and do not want to do. Three, they were all really terrible at the game. Ugh, another one! I would tell my husband. What are all these dudes thinking, trying to start games with me? I’ll stomp a mud hole in their board! I accepted the first few, and then I started declining all of them. Three or four timed out. I wound up resigning the chatty ones as well because I just couldn’t stomach it. I didn’t want to block anyone and hurt their feelings. See, I was still assuming these were real people. I had this idea that some podcast or dating book was advising lonely older fellas to pick up women through Words With Friends. Huh, I thought, what must that be like? I’m 44 and super mega married, but if I were single I would go out and meet people face to face. After declining a bunch of invites for several days, I thought, Maybe it’s my profile photo. For someone a decade or more older I might look reasonably appealing. I took a new photo showing only my ring hand. For the record, I wear the world’s most unambiguous wedding ring ever, a plain gold band. I’M MARRIED, is the idea here. The weird invites kept coming. “These guys can’t even play!” I told my husband, who at this point was bemused and had also gotten sucked in. We were playing each other, taking turns winning by over a hundred points per match. I think he blows his whole lunch break on our games. “What are they thinking, challenging someone at my level?” I’m not, like, ranked or whatever, but I do have nearly 40 years of experience. “Average word score, seven points? I played better than that in first grade!” Finally, I got one! I was so excited. A challenge from a player with a higher average word score than me, that’s a challenge I’ll accept. He opened with a nice 59-point bingo. The chat began immediately. “Hello beautiful Jessica.” I threw up in my mouth a little, but after four turns this was shaping up into an impressive board. I thought, if only I can get him to cool the Lothario BS then we can get down to business. I replied. “I’m extremely married btw. Just here to play. Impressive opening!” He forfeited. He resigned with a 20-point lead?? I had been telling my husband about the exciting development of the Worthy Challenger. We both got some comedy value out of the situation. I wondered openly if this guy was using an app to make his plays, just so he could... make his plays. A new kind of “neg,” to make your opponent question her gameplay and think you’re some kind of stud? They might be onto something, I thought. I used to tell everyone after my divorce that I would only marry a man who could beat me at Scrabble. Be careful what you wish for, wink. It clicked for my husband before it clicked for me. It’s a phishing scam, he said. AHA!!!! These may actually be bots, or I suppose there could be a bunch of live humans hunched over their keyboards in some corner of the world, trying to lure in lonely old women. It happens on dating sites All. The. Time. “Oh I love you schmoopy, now please send me tens of thousands of dollars for plane tickets/bail money/my sister’s surgery” and goodbye retirement. They obviously don’t know their gaming broads. Personally it’s hard for me to imagine anything less attractive than a game request from an arrogant man, non-respecter of marriage vows, who can’t even freaking play. My parrot could run a better board, but then she cheats by feeling out the letters with her tongue when she draws her tiles. You can recognize these invites pretty easily. They’re all professional headshots and I’m pretty sure every one of them has a beard, like the guy from the Most Interesting Man in the World ads. Several of them are snuggling cute little purse-dogs. Come on. If these were “real” men they would all be either holding a fish or leaning on their car. I do play strangers from time to time. I have a regular partner, a woman about my parents’ age, who has been beating me by around ten points. Breathtaking endgame. I have another, no idea what gender/nongender they may claim, who plays well and also never chats. As far as I’m concerned, we can go on like this forever. My brother has one as well; they’ve been playing for several years. I feel lucky to live in a world where I can play virtual board games, with my family, my husband, and well-matched strangers. I also feel lucky to be the kind of skeptical curmudgeon who is more or less invulnerable to flirtation. I hope you’re trying to flatten me, not flatter me. I still haven’t done anything so far this January! I’m proud of this because sometimes it’s a difficult commitment to keep. It’s more important to me to work my goals ten months of the year than it is to try to maintain some kind of “””perfect””” “””streak””” starting on Day One. Because January is a basically impossible time of year to do anything, other than maybe sleep more or spend less money.
The one thing I have done is to reframe one habit by thinking of it as something else entirely. That’s where the News Machine comes in. I have a terrible habit - actually many of them - and I also have a good habit, or at least one that I can invoke from time to time. This is part of my secret of habit change and personal transformation, the discovery that a good habit can be harnessed to flip over a bad one. It’s called “anchoring.” Peanut butter and... jelly. Socks and... shoes. Floss and... brush your teeth. Trampolines and... ice cream cones. (Ooh, messy). There is a reverse of this, as there is of most things, and that is when two bad habits are anchored together, or when a good habit triggers a bad one. If a pattern like this is recognized, then it’s time to brainstorm and figure out how to separate the two things. Like, every time I walk into the craft store I spend $40, or, every time I get a coffee I also get an ooey gooey pastry. Usually the “bad” habit is the thing that we feel is an intrinsic part of our very personality. I quite literally AM an ooey gooey pastry! On the molecular level! I don’t ever want to be the kind of person who is not that! This is why I usually refer to them as cute habits. Not “bad.” We weren’t born bad, we were born interesting! Okay, so, confession: my cute habit is that I’d rather be reading than doing basically anything else. And the bad version of that habit is that the more I read, the more I bookmark, and the longer my “to read” list gets. The reason this is bad is that it interferes with my enjoyment. I start to think of my favorite thing as a must-do. Rather than having 100% fun, I start to feel like I “need” to get “caught up.” Do you ever feel that way? Crafty people often start to feel like they “need” to “finish” projects, like they’re “behind” on scrapbooking or “finishing” a quilt. What is supposed to be nothing at all other than a relaxing hobby somehow transmogrifies into a guilt machine. I promised! I owe! It’s late! Those emotions come from anchoring the hobby to something else, like giving gifts, showing affection to friends and family, trying to save money, or earning approval. The pressure also comes from shopping for materials, where the more focus there is on the hobby, the more accumulation of materials, and the more space they take up in the home. We think the only ways to relieve those practical and social pressures are to craft faster, rather than to stop buying supplies and stop trying to create 100% handmade gifts. Get back to making it about relaxation! That’s turning into an entire separate piece, but I’m not going to claim that I’ll ever write it because I’m trying to reframe my personal concept of procrastination. Why do I feel like I’m procrastinating on personal projects? Why do I sometimes feel this way even when there’s no deadline, nobody is asking for anything from me, and literally nobody cares but me? Is this true for you, for anything in your life? As with a lot of things, it’s easier to just go with it than it is to try to change the emotion. I recognize that I feel “behind” on my reading, and I figure out what I can do with that feeling that will lead directly to a positive action. In my case, I use it to work out on the elliptical. There! I said it! I lied, I cheated! I’ve actually been crushing it this month down in the workout room! I just didn’t want to admit it while talking about New Year’s Resolutions, because it makes other people feel bad. Like my weird little goals have anything to do with anyone but me... I’ve found that I seem to read faster when I’m on the elliptical for some reason. It makes the time pass quickly. I’ve tried other types of habits to keep me working out. I tried running on the treadmill, and it makes me feel like my brain is slowly dying. (Current gym does not have a treadmill). I tried the exercise bike but it makes me sore and I don’t think it gives me any results. I tried watching TV shows on the elliptical, but it makes me feel like every minute is really 18 minutes. The thing I’ve settled on is that I can read through news articles. Whatever works! I can’t emphasize this enough. If you think in terms of “supposed to” and “because” and “everyone else” and “not doing it right” and “fail,” you’re stopping yourself before you start. Try thinking in terms of “works for me” and “not sure why, but” and “for some reason.” You like what you like and you’re allowed to like it. This is why I’m not thinking about my workout as a workout. I’m thinking about it as the News Machine. When I change clothes, I’m thinking about how many articles I’m going to read, and *that* is my personal burn rate. My metric is that I started out with nearly 400 articles in my news queue, and now I’m down to 120. Yay! After that, there’s my *other* news queue, and then my “read at leisure” email folder, and then my open tabs... According to my phone, I’m burning 18% more calories per workout after only two weeks. That comes from the feeling that I call “getting the lead out.” Like I threw off some lead weights. If my starting goal had been to “burn calories” or “move faster” I’m sure I would have been discouraged and I would already be feeling like I aimed too high. Instead, I’m really just excited about finally feeling that elusive satisfaction of being “all caught up.” I can see it, a month or two from now. If I can keep reading this fast, if I can keep getting a spot on the News Machine... I’ll probably just keep adding more stuff and making my list longer. Because who would I be without a to-do list or a never-ending stack of things to read? I’m working on my procrastination tendencies, and something struck me. There are basically two types of procrastination: letting yourself down or letting other people down.
The most commonly procrastinated tasks are financial planning and dealing with health issues. Those come from a lack of urgency, because we can’t imagine Future Self. When we think of an older version of ourselves, the one who will be suffering the consequences of our delays, it lights up in our brains as “a stranger.” Old Me? I don’t know her. Other than these Future Self types of problems, most of the things we procrastinate affect other people. In this light, suddenly procrastination is less about our to-do lists and more about how we show up for others. It’s one thing to put off making a dentist appointment. It’s my mouth, after all. It’s another thing to put off doing something when someone else is counting on it. Not returning calls, texts, voicemail, emails, skywriting, singing telegrams, or whatever is not a task, not in the way that filing taxes is a task. It’s a refusal to engage. It’s a missed connection, a ringing phone that is never picked up, to put things in 1980’s terms. Maybe that’s the difference? In the Eighties, most of our missed connections would literally be a ringing phone or a knock on the door. We spent time together face to face. This is hard to imagine, but kids would walk over to each other’s apartments, knock on the door, and ask whoever answered, “Can So-and-So come out to play?” We’d call each other’s homes and literally anyone in the family might answer, because the phone was an object that sat in the kitchen or living room. Now, a huge amount of our communication is textual. Social media, text messages, email. It feels much colder and more removed. The expectation may be that we do *not* reach the other person directly, that the response will be time-delayed. While this may work well for most people, for others (including me) I think it makes it feel more abstract. Just a few letters of the alphabet, probably on a piece of glass, rather than another human face and voice. When we think of a task in the abstract, it’s easy to forget that our participation matters to someone. The act of setting a bowl in the kitchen sink, wandering away, and leaving it there feels like something other than “I hereby choose to proactively annoy my coworkers/roommates/spouse who have already told me that they hate having dirty dishes in the sink.” Maybe sometimes that act is done specifically because it bothers other people? Maybe we don’t feel so much like “putting this in the dishwasher takes five seconds, I can do it faster than I can actually make the decision” but rather “I DO WHAT I WANT.” Is what we do, or avoid doing, built around asserting our autonomy? Personally I feel that my autonomy is a resolved state of affairs. There is no debate around whether I do what I want all the time or not. Putting my bowl in the dishwasher is a way of marking my territory, and it’s the same if I wash up after someone else. This is *my* kitchen and *I* make the rules in this room. Or, I clean up after myself in other people’s homes because I affirmatively build my reputation as a do-er and person of action. If people are going to gossip about me, I want it to be about something far more interesting than whether I am a lazy dish-leaver. For me, physical tasks are the easiest. I like mindless chores because I can knock them off while listening to a book. I am good at practical things like sewing buttons, assembling furniture kits, or adjusting the brakes on my bike. I do these things because they make good puzzles and I’m a physically restless person. Whether I’ve made someone else happy by doing these small jobs is mostly beside the point. There, I fixed it! Where I have more trouble is in communication chores. I tend to convince myself that I need to choose the perfect time to have a conversation with someone. I’m going to write that response when I can really concentrate and get the details right. The longer I delay, the more it turns into a big deal, which makes it feel like it needs even more bells and whistles. If you are my friend and you haven’t heard from me in a year, it probably means I really like you! It seems like maybe there are two sides to this coin. Maybe there are people who would have an easier time doing abstract chores, like taking out the trash, if they realized that it really matters to someone else. It could be a gift. Not “I am doing this annoying chore” but “So-and-So will be pleased if I do what I said I would do.” On the other side of that same coin, maybe people like me (and are there any?) would have an easier time following through on communication if we saw it more as a task to get done. Maybe thinking of a pending call or message as a loose button or a dirty dish would make that crucial difference. Usually when I finally get back to someone, all they wanted was to touch base and say Hi. It didn’t need to be a huge emotional breakthrough, just a one-minute “thinking of you.” How weird would it be if my various casual friends and acquaintances knew it’s easier for me to do something like, I dunno, cleaning out a drain than it is to just say HI back? All of this probably comes back to our tendencies, to how likely we are to meet internal vs external expectations. In my case, I know that I will do anything if I’ve decided it’s a good idea. What is it that I’m telling myself when I put off responding to text messages? How can I convince myself to see this type of communication as a simple, straightforward social task? How about you? What type of procrastination are you prone to? Would it be easier for you to get it done with someone else to keep you company? Or are you more of a lone wolf? There are probably a bunch of couples around the world who happen to be named “Harry and Meghan” - particularly because I doubt anyone refers to them as “Heghan” or “Megry.” There is, though, only one celebrity couple so I’ll assume everyone knows who I mean.
I asked my husband what he would do if he were Harry in this situation. Basically “paparazzi killed my mom, this is the most boring job on Earth, I never liked it anyway and now everyone is completely terrible to my wife, BYEEEEE.” What would he do if he were about to celebrate his first day as a free man? Probably watch some sports and drink a (warm) beer on the couch. Then what? We agreed that most guys would just do whatever their “thing” is, but that Harry probably never had a chance to even figure that out. What kind of guy is he? What would he do if he were born ordinary? This is a man who may never have played a video game, stood in line at the movie theater, or made his own sandwich. What would it be like to have no idea how much mustard you like? Or what kind? Or if you even like mustard at all? It’s fairly easy for me to imagine what I would do if I were Meghan. That’s because I live in Southern California. A lot of extremely famous actors, musicians, models etc have homes within ten miles of my apartment, and apparently there are several in the two-mile range. This is the crux of the problem for royalists. Clearly the “wealthy California celebrity” lifestyle is preferable to the “British aristocrat” lifestyle. It must burn their collective bacon. There’s something about the fantasy of aristocracy that really appeals to a lot of people. Note how many princess movies we have, both for kids and for adults, both animated and live-action. Gee, imagine, you get to have servants! And whatever gowns and jewels you want! And you get to have perfect hair and makeup all day every day! And live in a palace! Plus you’re in love with a handsome prince! *sigh* *swoon* *barf* I mean, I got to live the princess fantasy in some ways. I threw a shoe at my current husband, making him fall in love with me, and he elevated me to the middle class. (I was on my way to doing it for myself, but it would have taken me several years longer to make it alone). We danced at our wedding and all that. Then we won the game. We’ve had the incredible good fortune to be both married and able to live in perfect obscurity. We can go anywhere we want, do anything we want, wear whatever we want, and behave in whatsoever manner we choose. The press never reports on us. I don’t think people give enough consideration to this. We have something that money cannot buy, something that every celebrity wants, something truly enviable. We have liberty. If I were Meghan, I know what I’d do. On my first day of freedom, I’d wear my hair pulled back in a low ponytail. No makeup. I’d wear yoga pants and walk around barefoot. I’d read a book. Later, I’d go to the store and load up my cart and then I’d come home and put a tray of tater tots in the oven. Heck yeah! The great thing about this particular dream of freedom is that I can literally live it every single day, and nobody is stopping me. Nobody speculates about whether I’m pregnant, or takes pictures of my cellulite, or follows me around town, or suggests that I should wear high heels with jeans. I don’t have to read rumors about my marriage in the tabloids. Gossip about me and my life would be pretty low-caliber, and that’s okay. Amazing in fact. What I dislike about the aristocratic lifestyle is... everything. All these highly posed group photos and extreme fashion guidelines. If part of the job of duchess is to wear pantyhose and pumps on a regular basis, I’m out. Everything royals do is in the public eye, and those public things they do are not things that interest me. At all. Nary a one. I’m not into that style of architecture, landscaping, or interior design either. I have everything I’ve ever wanted. Aside from privacy and freedom from constant scrutiny, what I’ve wanted has always been BOOKS, comfortable shoes, and access to a wide variety of multicultural foods. Secret love affair with the interesting, mostly ordinary man whom I call husband. Messy pets. Ability to hang out with my wacky family, filters completely off, no dress code, and laugh until I snort. My life is mine, not the community’s. I’m not public property. I have no concerns about Duty or Legacy or Heritage or whatever the heck those people talk about. Nobody follows me around with a gilded clipboard or a little bound ledger, reciting rules and regulations at me, and I don’t have a style guide. The only protocol in my life is dictated by my parrot, who has her own elaborate ways. There seems to be a broad consensus, outside of SoCal anyway, that celebrities deserve whatever they get, that once you’re in the public eye then total loss of privacy is the price. Here, we understand that even famous people want to walk down the street, go to the airport, or have dinner with their families in peace and quiet. We know what famous life looks like, and that gives us sympathy. History always comes around, and around, and around. Eighty-ish years ago Edward VIII abdicated so he could be with the woman of his choice, a decision that gets less and less romantic the more one looks into the details, but it was his basic right as a human being. A baby does not choose to become a family brand ambassador. All Edward and Harry wanted was to be in love and have jobs, to make their own money in the ordinary way. All they wanted, in other words, was to have what we have. An ordinary life, an ordinary love, an ordinary job, an ordinary home. Just for a moment, let’s all pretend that we are abdicating royalty and that we’ve chosen this homely mess for ourselves. It’s January, the best month to DO NOTHING except explore, learn, and develop your curiosity about goals and resolutions. I’m proud to say that I haven’t really done anything toward my annual goals yet, just like most years. This is because of everything I’ve learned about “productivity” and habit formation over the years. Perfection be gone! Death to unbroken streaks! The War of Art utterly changed my life. You can read it in one sitting, or you can listen to it on audio like I did and walk around with your mouth hanging open. For those of us who want to DO ALL THE THINGS at the same time, multipotentialites who struggle to stay focused, generally people who feel stretched too thin - try The One Thing, There is no way to read Better Than Before without finding several helpful insights. Plus Gretchen is a really sweet person with a gentle approach. Getting Things Done is the one to show off at work, although only after you’ve read the first couple of chapters. This is an analog sort of book and I don’t really agree with Allen’s tech-free focus; that being said, it’s great for pencil-and-paper people. This book helped me see that Getting Organized actually mattered. I didn’t really see the point of it all before I read this. It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys, indeed. The one true clutter book! I have this practically memorized. Flip through it and read any section of any page.
Apparently quitting social media in some form or another is a common resolution at the New Year. Who knew? If this is something you’ve thought of doing, this is what it was like for me.
I didn’t make a resolution to quit Facebook. On the contrary. For a couple of years I felt really guilty for not spending more time there. I just couldn’t make myself. I tried forcing myself to make the occasional token appearance, but each time it would end the same way. Finally I realized that I was done and I should stop pretending I was ever going to treat social media like a commitment again. My reasons for feeling ill at the thought of logging in to Facebook might overlap with yours, or they might not. Reasons for doing something else with your time can vary and cover quite a lot of categories. I realized I was losing an average of two hours a day, and I’d rather spend that time reading I kept seeing rants about unwanted game invites and it seemed ironic I got tired of looking at pictures of meat and other badly lit, uninspiring amateur food photography I started thinking that Mark Zuckerberg is a supervillain, that or a cyborg belonging to a supervillain Ultimately I decided to replace the unsatisfying time I had been burning on Facebook over the past few years with in-person social activities instead. The thing I dislike about Facebook the most is the way that people relate in text. The more time I spend away from what used to be a regular part of my day, the more I realize that people truly never act in person the way they do on social media. In so, so many ways is this true! I would be reading through a thread on a friend’s wall, and someone would insult someone else. This happened countless times. There would be this perfectly reasonable, interesting conversation that might have continued for hours or days. Suddenly, someone would pop on and be really rude. This is often the root of “unfriending,” a social phenomenon for which there was not even a word until Zucky came along. It’s not so much that I cared about people insulting *me*, although it happened. It’s that it was so hard to read through a single thread anywhere, on any topic, without it happening. I didn’t even participate in the vast majority of discussions; as a rule, I would only comment if I felt I had something new and different to add, a point to make that hadn’t already been covered. That’s actually another problem entirely - how many times someone would pop up to make a comment that had already been made by someone else. It proved they hadn’t read the whole thread, and sometimes what they said wasn’t even relevant or made no sense. It seemed that out of all the people I knew socially, only a handful would moderate the discussions on their threads in any way. Almost all tolerated routine rudeness or impertinence. I don’t think I’m being too sensitive in this, because as I said, it wasn’t being directed at me. It was tiresome to read through it even when I had never met the arguers involved. This was by no means limited to political discussions! People argued about dog breeds and travel behavior and brands of cell phone and wheat and a thousand other things of little to no consequence. I didn't find it cute or funny. Well, sometimes I did. Mostly I just shook my head and wondered how such innocuous conversations could turn on a dime so quickly. What was making previously ordinary people suddenly so combative and belligerent? Text-based conversations, that’s what. What finally happened in my life was that I replaced Facebook with a social club. It could be anything at all, for others, like pickleball or a book group, a band or the dog park or a yoga class. In my case it was Toastmasters. I started talking to more people face to face. That has always been hard for me, because I’m a shy person and I have struggled quite a lot with social anxiety. It turns out that, at least where I live, most people are really pretty nice. The great advantage of being a shy person is that it can make you into a great listener. If you learn to ask thoughtful questions, you can become a sort of interviewer and draw fascinating stories out of people. They flourish under the attention. Sometimes they say they’ve never told that story before, or that they hadn’t thought about it in years. Storytelling is so much more interesting and fun than arguing! One story inspires another. We get each other going. We laugh, we cry. We pull each other aside to share observations and compliments. We learn, eventually, how to turn even the most innocuous and minor incidents into well-structured anecdotes. Example: earlier today I was walking my dog when a slice of toast landed on the sidewalk right in front of us. I looked up, wondering where it could have come from. Did a gull drop it? Then a woman’s head popped over a balcony. She started calling out apologies. She’d thrown the toast “for the birds” and didn’t know we were there. I laughed so hard! I could easily imagine myself doing the same thing. I wasn’t mad, I was amused and grateful that something mildly entertaining happened that day. Without a storytelling group, I might never have thought to share that with anyone. Not the most fascinating story ever told, but I’m sure it has the potential to remind someone else of another story, and then we’re off. I have never once, not a single time in three years, heard someone insult someone else in Toastmasters. People do give speeches on sensitive topics, definitely including politics at times. Sometimes these are formal assignments in our program. Pick a controversial topic and try to persuade people of your position. I did mine on outdoor cats, and one guy still wanted to talk about it two months later. It happens. But, we laugh about it because we can see each other’s facial expressions. We can hear each other’s tone of voice. We have a history of liking each other and enjoying one another’s company. Is that still true of your experience on social media? Most of my social media “friends” are people I know in person. We friended each other because we met and we liked each other enough to stay in touch. In a lot of cases, though, I think we lost that affectionate regard because our online personas annoyed each other. We liked each other better before social media came along and messed it up. In a few cases, friends have reached out to DM me, or text me if we’re close enough that they have my phone number. Some of them have arranged to come for a visit. This is part of how you find out who your real friends are, the ones who miss you and like you the most. Mostly, though, you find that you care more about them than they care about you. I traded my former Facebook time for a bunch of other stuff. I became a Distinguished Toastmaster. I started having board game parties from time to time. I have text message threads with my family. I also read a lot more books and started up a technology newsletter. When I was active on social media, I realized that it put me in a worse mood almost every time. There would always be something that irritated me or made me sad. When I traded that in for hanging out with other people face to face, I realized that it left me feeling better every time. Laughs and hugs and food for thought, great stories and light hearts. If there was really a way to capture all of that through text, over social media, believe me, I’d never leave it alone. Thinking about going plant-based for the month? Perhaps you’re even a week in and still feeling all wobbly like a young deer? This will be my 23rd January as a vegan, so let me share from my experience.
It is your right as a consumer in a free market to eat or not eat whatever you want, and to buy or not buy whatever you want. Mine too. It is SO easy now! There are vegan options almost everywhere now, from the baseball stadium to Hooters to Costco to basically every fast food chain. It’s even easier when you travel to almost anywhere outside the US, including Iceland. You can also find absolutely millions of fully illustrated recipes and cooking videos online. There are even cookbooks devoted to all your favorite comfort foods, junk food, and desserts of every description. This should be a relatively laid-back and fun experiment for you, not like the bad old days, she said darkly… I quit eating meat in 1993, and then quit all animal products in 1997. At the time, this led to constant trolling and criticism, and by this I mean physically thrusting meat in my face and wagging it at me. Trying to trick me into eating stuff with meat in it. Outright lying about ingredients through the first round of questions. The peer pressure was endless and it went on like that for years. Fortunately, my spirit animal is a little critter named Zero Fox. What enabled me to carry on with my lifestyle was mainly my utter condescension for social pressure. I had been bullied all through school, and this made me despise groupthink. There were no insults I hadn’t already heard, and I’d even had groups of cruel schoolmates trick me into putting horrible things in my mouth. By this time in my life, I had the backbone to do whatever I wanted, no matter what anyone said. Not everyone does. For those who are vulnerable to peer pressure and social comparison, this might actually be a really excellent area for personal growth! I haven’t had anyone bother me about my lifestyle in several years now. Not sure exactly why. Somehow, our culture shifted, or at least it did in the beachy SoCal area I call home. Every now and then someone makes a faux pas, like announcing in front of fifty people that “Jessica will just have to pick out the cheese,” and someone other than me will collect them and deal with it. Generally everyone in both my professional and social circles knows I’m vegan, and the only time it comes up is when someone guides me around the snack table. This is how much things have changed: My husband and I do martial arts, and most of the instructors at our academy are full-on lifestyle vegan. Their potlucks are LIT. It’s so common now that you probably know a few plant-based people who don’t bother to mention it. It’s much more common in athletic and entrepreneurial circles than among ordinary suburbanites. On the off chance that you are so unfortunate as to be surrounded by amateur insult comics, you may be starting to realize that you could use a little help in dealing with them. That’s where I come in. I tell people that I’ll give them a nice flat green American dollar if they can tell me a vegan joke I haven’t already heard. So far many have tried and all have failed. The only real vegan joke is “Vegetarian is Native American for “lousy hunter,”” which is problematic and hasn’t been funny for thirty years. I can recite it along with them. Actually there are two jokes that you can tell in any audience, one vegetarian and one vegan: Q: “How many vegetarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” A: “I don’t know, but where do you get your protein?” And the other: Q: “How many vegans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” A: “Two, one to hold it and one to read the ingredients.” They follow up by stating that plants have feelings. Uh. The animals that you eat, eat more plants than I eat. If you honestly believed that then you would quit eating meat. It only ever comes up when people want to… whatever it is that they want to do. Save me from myself? “Own” me? I’m a Mensan, a Distinguished Toastmaster, and a practicing standup comic. Bring it. “It’s so sweet of you to be so concerned about my health! How thoughtful! I didn’t realize you felt that way!” About that “where do you get your protein” question: it’s based on 1930’s-era concepts of nutrition. I tell people that even iceberg lettuce has protein, and then ask them where they get their magnesium. Almost all Americans are deficient in this vital nutrient and they have no idea what it does for the body or what foods contain it. See, people do have genuine questions about food, legitimate questions, and they have no clue who they can trust to give them any guidance. Our doctors aren’t taught nutrition in medical school, and it’s not like our teachers or parents were either. We rely on advertisements and marketing campaigns. The idea that what we eat has anything at all to do with our physical wellbeing, emotional or mental health, or longevity is unsettling to say the least. Attacking someone who is exploring new ways to eat is a lot easier than confronting the boogeyman. Is there a better explanation for why someone in the 95% majority would act so threatened and defensive? Part of why I have an easier time dealing with haters, trolls, and naysayers is that I’m visibly doing really well. I’ll be 45 this year and I haven’t eaten meat since I was 17. I can pass for 30, I’m on no medications, and I have no issues with such common middle-aged problems as high blood pressure, cholesterol, or diabetes. I hate to say it, but three or four of the people who used to tease me about my health nut ways have… already died. People my age. The things that people will say to a teenager or young person in her twenties are along the lines of “You’ll find out one day what you’re doing to your body.” People feel quite free to bother girls about our health and imply that if we eat anything other than the Standard American Diet, we will lose our minds. Once they realize that you’re middle-aged, it changes. My doctor told me, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” which most people my age don’t get to hear too often. My husband is turning 52. He still eats meat once or twice a month, which is his business, and which I feel gives me added credibility as a non-insane, apolitical non-extremist. He isn’t on any medications either. Apparently that’s some kind of medical miracle. His total cholesterol is 130. Assume that anyone asking you questions is walking through a set of standard responses, exactly the same as they do in other novel social situations. For instance, I have a parrot, and people always ask 1. If she can talk and 2. How old she is. What people have been taught to say when they meet a vegetarian is “How do you get your protein,” “soy milk is bad for you,” and “plants have feelings.” After that they’re out of ideas. You may be the very first non-standard eater this person has ever met, and you can turn it into a neutral, maybe even positive, experience. Do this with a good sense of humor and one of the top-three dishes on the potluck table, and eventually whatever you want to eat will be a non-issue. I hope you like hummus. How’ve you been?
Busy, so busy! Yeah, me too. January is the time of year when I think about TIME the most. The way that time is passing. Everything older people used to tell me about how time moves faster when you’re older unfortunately turned out to be true. How can we possibly “live our dreams” or have a bucket list when we’re so gosh-darn busy? We have to. I think it’s time for a major cultural change. I think we’ve all passed “peak busy” and we’re ready for something else. In fact, I think we should all start bragging about how lazy we are instead! I don’t believe that “lazy” actually exists. I’m just saying that. The only people I’ve ever heard describe themselves as lazy turn out to be doing all sorts of things. Did you realize that you can’t be both lazy and a procrastinator at the same time? Seriously. A truly lazy person would not feel bothered by not doing something and wouldn’t feel guilty about putting anything off, either. So which one is it? Are you lazy or are you a procrastinator? I’m picking lazy, as soon as I can figure out how to do it. The way our current system is set up, we’re supposed to Work Hard so we can earn money so we can Retire. Retirement is about relaxing and doing nothing as a reward, right? If relaxing in retirement is so great, then why wait?? Actually I think the idea of hanging out in a recliner in front of a television is the most boring thing imaginable. I don’t really believe in retirement in the traditional sense. What I want is INTERESTING, not “busy.” Busy is not interesting in itself because it makes us exactly like everyone else. It usually consists of work, chores, and errands. Why not lead with our real interests? Since surely we do and think about more than just work, chores, and errands? I’ll tell you mine. Do you think the thylacine is really still alive?? The Tasmanian tiger? Also, do you think Kate Middleton ever secretly attacks a heavy bag and just kicks it over and over again while screaming curse words? I would. Anyway. We all know that somehow, in between all the “busy” things we do, we have plenty of time to play with our phones. We text and look at memes and follow celebrity gossip and play games. Which is awesome, and also a great list of things to do while pushing pedals on the elliptical. I go on the elliptical because I’m lazy. I could be running along the beach but there’s a really steep hill on the way back to my apartment. It’s easier to just take the elevator down to our little apartment gym, the one that basically nobody uses. Mostly I go down there and read articles about astrology. Totally true. So busy! So, so busy! The thing is that everyone gets the same 24 hours, infuriating as it is. Same as Beyoncé, Kate Middleton, and the high school students riding their skateboards past my apartment. Those 24 hours are the only thing we all have in common. Are we going to make them ours, or are we going to give them to other people and their priorities? Pretend an hour of your life is your favorite beverage. Are you going to let someone just walk up, snatch it out of your hand, and drink it right in front of you? My green tea soy latte NOOOOOOOO This is exactly why I set my goals and resolutions every year. It’s my little way of saying “in your face” to every naysayer or critic or bad boss I’ve ever had. This hour, it’s mine. Not yours, mine. I decide what to do with my time and you do not. So nyah. My first boss at my first official paycheck job assigned me to scrub the baseboards. The other employees told me they had never heard of anyone having to do that at that job. Why me? I dunno. I got a better job, tripled my income, and left. My final paycheck was under $40. Not every use of time is deserving of our attention. We do have to do a lot of necessary but boring stuff. Life is, what, 80% maintenance? Work, commute, fold laundry, try to figure out where all these little packets of soy sauce and ketchup keep coming from, stand in line somewhere, repeat. Thus it’s up to us to fit in anything personal, to make time for anything that actually matters to us. For a lot of people, that magic personal thing is listening to music. For others, it’s putting on makeup or watching cute animal videos or choosing new tattoo art. We fit these personal things into our lives somehow or other. What if we could fit in more? What if there were more of those forgotten personal things, and it turned out that we have time for them after all? A friend of mine started drawing again after many years without. Actually two friends of mine did this in different years. In both cases, I could not believe how talented they were, and that nobody knew. Why on earth would you ever give that up? What, not even doodle while you’re on the phone? Not even while you’re out to dinner and there’s a paper tablecloth? Most of us associate these talents and interests with our school days. For some reason we think it’s normal to sigh and give up. It’s true that most of us give up lounging on our beds, reading song lyrics, talking on the phone for hours, and all the other fun things we did in high school. We get home at six instead of three, and where are we supposed to find those extra three hours a day? But then how do the statistics keep coming back that the average American spends five hours a day watching TV? We certainly don’t need to stop watching TV if that’s what we really love to do. I doubt, though, that we should keep claiming that we’re so, so busy if that’s the main reason we aren’t living our dreams. We should instead proudly proclaim that we’re indulging ourselves, relaxing quite recklessly in defiance of social norms. There’s time, there’s time for all of it. You can learn a new language while you commute. You can play your favorite 100 albums of all time during your shower, week by week. You can “catch up on laundry” while binge-watching every show you ever wanted. You can draw during lunch. You can even train for a marathon if you have 4-6 hours a week. Not only is there plenty of time for you to put your own fun first, but if you have kids it’s still true. Kids like fun best of all. Set a good example. People have the wrong idea about this whole “new year, new you” thing. We feel it as pressure. Like the only way to do it is to eat a lot of celery while filing paperwork. Instead it can be a form of rebellion, of reclaiming time for yourself and your own choices in the face of that exact same social pressure. So society wants me to be busy, so so busy? I’m just going to retire early and start telling the truth about my life. The truth is that I like to spend part of my time wearing silly socks and making elaborate breakfasts, just for myself. I’m not busy every single minute and I’m done pretending. How about you? The biggest problem with New Year’s Resolutions is that they get miscategorized. If you want to win at this game, you have to be clear about the rules. What does I WON look like?
The whole thing is much easier when you look at it as a game and approach it with curiosity, or hilarity if you can manage it. Typically it looks like this. Someone blurts out a resolution on New Year’s Eve, and then quits by the middle of January because they couldn’t manage a perfect streak. Each time they feel guilty and dumb for trying. The only things we should have a perfect streak at are all hygiene-related! Like, go ahead and skip Duolingo - I don’t care what that owl says, unless it’s a barred owl in which case watch out - but please don’t skip washing your hands or brushing your teeth, mmkay? Okay, let’s say the goal is to choose something fun and entertaining to do over the rest of the calendar year. We’ll use my friend Ed’s idea from 2018, which was to “ride more roller coasters.” How does Ed know that he has kept his resolution? What he has done is to set an “implementation intention.” He is going to ride “more” roller coasters. He has a clear vision in his mind that he and his wife are going to drive over to an amusement park, buy tickets, and get on the ride. (At that point, willpower no longer applies and the rest of the resolution happens on its own). Technically, if Ed and Mrs. Ed rode zero roller coasters in 2017, and one in 2018, then he has kept his resolution because one is “more” than zero. In actuality, this roller coaster deal happened throughout the year and became a fun, memorable series of dates. This was a successful “resolution” but it could also reasonably be considered a “quest” or a “mission” or a “project.” It could even be an “experiment,” the purpose of which was to overcome the fear of roller coasters. (That’s called exposure therapy, and it usually works for most people, just like public speaking did for me). The idea here is to find a way to explore your intent and desire in a way that is not punishing or shaming, because what fun is that? How does it get anyone anywhere? If it really is important or interesting to you, then you would probably want to figure out how to set yourself up for success. By the end of the year, whatever it was that attracted you would be satisfied in some way. A regular part of your daily routine? A memory and interesting story? Information that taught you that it wasn’t what you thought it was, and now you no longer want to play the bagpipes after all? Certainly an escape clause should be built in. You want a way to release yourself from your internal contract. A learning experience is not failure; in fact, far from it. Every learning experience gets you closer to the ideal vision of what you want for your life - and do not want! A friend of mine has made a resolution to stop making assumptions about other people’s intentions. He had the insight that he tends to tell himself stories about what other people are thinking when they do or say certain things. This type of projection is stressful, and often wrong. This is a great example of a resolution, because it is meaningful to him and because it will take time to get it down. If he’s right, it will improve his life and there would thus never be a reason to quit doing it. It’s a resolution without a specific timeline or destination, which makes it poorly suited as a traditional “goal.” Meanwhile, someone could have a goal of returning their ancient overdue library books from three years ago. That would be a clearly defined “goal” that also counts as a resolution. They would know when they were “done” and they would also have kept their implementation intention. (I did this once for a client and the librarians emailed me because they were so curious how I got ahold of the books). This same hypothetical person could make another resolution to “only check out digital books” so they never again have an overdue book, yay! One of my resolutions for 2020 includes a “project.” I am learning about new ways to simplify, automate, or eliminate household chores. Built-in motivation, right? I have no idea how much I am going to learn or how long it will take me to explore this, which is why it’s a project and not a goal or a resolution. Another person might have a cooking project, or something like making raised garden beds, turning their garage into a music studio, or building a treehouse. I also have a “quest,” which is to train for a fifty-mile ultramarathon over the next five years. If I were able to do this within three years, that would be amazing. I also wouldn’t be disappointed if it took me longer. The idea is to be fit enough to do an ultra at age fifty, so performing this magic trick at an even more advanced age would actually be an improvement over the original vision. I have a traditional style of “resolution,” which I call a “stop goal.” I only frame stop goals when I realize that I’ve been doing something to drive myself crazy and annoy myself. One year it was to stop leaving tissues in my pockets and then running them through the washing machine, so that little shreds of wet tissue would disperse themselves throughout all the clothes. Years later I am six-sigma successful at this. This year it’s to stop procrastinating on listening to my voicemail on the rare occasions when I get them. Perfection is not the aim for a stop goal; it’s actually liberation from an easily preventable form of self-bothering. Even if you only do it once, that’s one less time than usual, one less time of annoying yourself for no reason. Probably the reason so many of us quit and give up on our “resolutions” is that we pick the preachy ones. Quit biting my nails, stop smoking, Lose Weight, save money. If we had any idea how to do these things, we definitely would have done them already. It’s not our fault if we don’t know what to do on day one. This is why I believe that it pays to set aside two months to be streak-free, goal-free, and thus failure-free. December is for deciding what to do, and January is for starting to learn how to do it. The more clarity we can get on what we want, how it looks and feels, and how other people have generally made it happen, the more likely that we are to keep our resolutions. Because we want them, they are fun and interesting, and we like them! |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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