Happy New Year! It has now been precisely one year since last February 1. Right about now, almost everyone who made a New Year’s Resolution has given up on it. There are two types of New Year’s scoffers: the cynics and the self-disappointers. The latter category punish themselves for the terrible crime of not being aware of the latest advances in habit change research. Cynicism, well, that is its own punishment. Look, habit change is hard. Part of why it’s hard is that we don’t have many role models for people who have done it. If my problem is nail-biting, talking to a friend who quit smoking may or may not help me quit biting my nails. Worse, if I tell anyone at all about my plans, I’m just as likely to be mocked or lectured by naysayers as I am to get any encouragement or support. I’ve survived every day of my life up until now. Whatever I’ve done, it’s worked. I’m still alive. Whatever bad or good habits I have, whatever good or bad habits I haven’t yet adopted, doing one of them once probably wouldn’t give me enough information for a permanent sale. Flossing is the best example of this. I could never fool my dental hygienist by flossing only a night or two before my appointment. Once I started flossing regularly, I couldn’t stop. Rather than feeling annoying and painful to do for one night, it feels gross to skip a night. Like most beneficial habits, it takes only a couple of minutes. I can use this one successful habit change, one that has become a welcome part of my life, to remind myself that every time I’ve tested a new positive habit, I’ve loved it. I’ve always wished I had started sooner. Self-compassion is the key to habit change. I’m doing this for myself, because I know it will make my life better. I know Future Self will be better off if I do this now. If I don’t do this now, Future Self will be disappointed and will wish she could go back in time to tell me off. I’m taking care of myself. I also treat myself compassionately as I fumble along the path to creating the new habit. It can’t be done in a perfect streak right from the start. I didn’t learn to stand up without falling on my diaper, I didn’t learn to tie my shoes without them coming undone regularly for 35 years, and I didn’t learn to talk without mispronouncing a lot of words. Why I should I treat myself any less patiently than I would treat a little child learning to eat with a spoon? I should be as kind to myself as I would be toward anyone else. It is this self-compassion that teaches us to be more compassionate toward others, as we finally realize that what is hard for us is hard for everyone. New habits take an average of 66 days to form. That means that if you’ve so much as had the thought cross your mind of developing a new habit in January, you’re still totally on track. If you’ve made the tiniest motion toward researching the habit, such as thinking about what time of day you will do it, you’re doing great. If you’ve acted on the desired new habit even once, you’re acing it. If you haven’t done as much as you would have liked, how is quitting going to help? There are still 11 months left of 2016, and that’s plenty of time. Do it once a month in winter, a couple of times a month through spring, once a week in summer, twice a week in the fall, and by the next holiday season, you could be doing whatever it is three times a week. At that point, it’s starting to sound like a real habit, isn’t it? Let’s do some examples: I had the goal of learning to drive. I applied for learner’s permits three times, and the first two expired. I took the driving test three times, and the first two times, I failed. I applied for the first permit when I was 18, and got the license at age 29. Now I’ve been driving for over a decade and I’ve never had a traffic citation. I use this as an example because most people I have met learned to drive as teenagers, the minute they were old enough. Driving was the hardest thing I ever did, and if it was fairly easy for you, then you can do anything I can! I had issues with my weight. I used to make vague resolutions like “drink more water” and then fail at them year after year. Now I’ve been at my goal weight for two years, and I feel strong and energetic. I first joined a gym at age 24. I have used and quit using five different gyms, and most of my adult life, I haven’t gone at all. I gained and lost and gained and lost the same 15 pounds at least 6 times, not understanding why it happened or what factors made a difference, or realizing that I was still overweight at my lightest. I finally made the decision to get educated and take any actions necessary. At age 39, 15 years after that first gym membership, I finally got where I wanted to be. (None of it actually happened in a gym, as it turns out). I love it about 10x more than I ever imagined I would. The thing about habit change is that it’s a life change. Sometimes it winds up changing your actual personality. It’s easy to fall into the trap of hating on ourselves for not being perfect, for not nailing it on the first try, for not getting an A+. Perfection is the opposite of change. You know two creatures that haven’t evolved in millions of years? The shark and the cockroach. Perfection. I talk to Past Self a lot. I’m convinced by now that she can actually hear me, if I yell at the screen loud enough. “DON’T GO IN THERE, PAST SELF!” (Maybe if I throw popcorn at her…) The more important certain events are in our timeline, the more often I revisit those scenes, and the more often I reinforce those messages. What if that little voice called the conscience was really mostly just time-traveling reverberations from our know-it-all, hindsight-is-20/20 future selves? It makes me want to listen harder, to find out if I can hear Future Self checking in more often. I shout out to her, “FUTURE SELF, WAS THAT YOU? THIS CONNECTION ISN’T VERY GOOD. CALL ME BACK!” I want to be as good a listener as I wish Past Self would be. Because that girl? Can be a real imp sometimes. Hey, Past Self. You really need to stop doing that thing. No I don’t. I DO WHAT I WANT! No, seriously. Search your heart; you know it to be true. Shut up, Future Self. You think you know everything. I DO know everything. I can see your future! You need to listen to me. Live your own life, Future Self. Don’t you have some retirement plans to worry about or something? Um, since you mention it… I know you already know about the law of compounding. AAARGGGH! Go away. I’m trying to live in the now! All I’m saying is that you’re really going to wish you had paid attention, just a short time from now. Okay, okay. What do you want me to do? I want you to quit drinking soda, go on a budget, lose some weight, start tracking your sleep metrics, get rid of your storage unit, and don’t date anyone on this list. [starts unfurling list] Pffft! [hangs up] Hello? Hello?? [stares at Future Phone] The trouble with all the advice I want to give Past Self is that I know it all sounds incredibly boring to her. Everything I know to be a good idea is intrinsically unappealing. Go to bed at 11. Stop reading in bed. Keep a food log. Stop buying books and clearing out the thrift store every month. Follow a housework schedule. NO. THANKS. From my current vantage point, I know the value of getting enough sleep is about 100x more than Past Self would rate it. I know we’re not going to want to keep a single item out of all her thrift shop finds, or that storage unit. I know how many times even an extra $25 in the bank would have saved our poor-planning little butt. I definitely know all the people we shouldn’t have dated. Most of all, though, if I really had only one wish? I wish Past Self would quit that soda habit. The one thing she cared about the most, the thing she was always least willing to consider rationally. Her one true, true vice. (Other than interrupting people and never calling anyone). Fortunately, I was at least dimly aware of the existence of Future Self from around the age of 19. I read about her in a book. She was hiking a trail a ways ahead of me, and every so often I would be allowed a glimpse of her, smiling at me over her shoulder, just before she disappeared around a bend. Who was she? What did she do for a living? What was she reading? Was she married? Did she ever learn to make decent pancakes? In this way, we start to determine the simple, harmless things we can do to make our daily lives comfortable and interesting. Past Self did a number of nice things for me, here in the present day, and as she got older and more experienced, she did more. She got us our retirement fund and our college degree and our driver’s license (in that order). She taught us to make the pancakes. She wrote hundreds of pages in our journal, working out a few of her issues, so that we could move forward with less baggage. She flossed our teeth and kept up to date on our tetanus shots and our passport. I have to try to be grateful for the favors and forgive her for the f-ups. After all, I can read her mind, but she can’t really read mine. Talking to Past Self always helps when I want to get ready for a conversation with Future Self. I remind myself of all the times I acted against our self-interest. How many times I fought our intuition and ignored that inner voice. How many times I overindulged in short-term hedonism, like eating cake for breakfast, and regretted it later, usually only an hour later! How many things I refused to submit to scrutiny, clinging to the exact habits that were draining and dissolving our quality of life. It keeps me humble. It makes me more receptive. It turns out that Future Self is pretty smart. She’s never steered me wrong. When I catch up to her, I can see the notes she leaves me on the trail markers, with little smiley faces and cheery notes saying “Well done, Past Self. You finally paid attention.” I’m not losing weight anymore. Diet industry, die in a fire, and I don’t say that lightly. Of course, I don’t have any weight TO lose anymore. I used to be obese. Now I’m at the actuarially endorsed “healthy weight for my height.” My BMI is 21 and I’m at 22% body fat. I wear a size zero. I’m 40, but men turn their heads when I walk by in a bikini. I ran a marathon. I could probably run 5 miles barefoot right now if I wanted. I’m stronger and more physically fit than I was at 15 or 25. That’s important to me, because I spent so many years battling one chronic illness or another. In my life, excess body fat and physical pain go together, like a right hand and a left hand. I did not go on a brand-name diet. I did not try meal substitution shakes, bars, powders, pills, teas, juices, smoothies, coffee with butter, Paleo, gluten-free, cleanses, or whatever else the $20 billion diet industry is constantly trying to sell us. (Compare to $30 billion for the self-storage industry; this is why I talk about clutter more than I do about health and fitness). I did not eat extra protein or fewer carbohydrates or even track my macros. What I did do was to use a scale, a measuring tape, and the MyFitnessPal app. I followed the app’s recommended calorie intake and logged everything I ate for three months. Then I kept going, not because I needed to lose more weight, but because I wanted to track my micronutrient consumption. My food log could one day be a valuable source of information if I need medical attention for some complicated health problem. (Like my cancer scare or the time I got a bald patch). I learned how much, and what, I could eat to maintain my new physique. I did not lose the weight at the gym. I didn’t even GO to a gym, and I haven’t stepped foot in one in years. Over the past two decades, I have had several gym memberships, been an avid bicycle commuter, taken dance, yoga, self-defense, water aerobics, and other exercise classes several days a week, and trained for a marathon. (In between years-long periods of illness when I did nothing at all). Working out is great fun and it feels good, once you get through the first three awful weeks of pain and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Working out has about zero to do with weight loss. I gained 8 lbs while I trained for my marathon because I kept cramming my little chipmunk cheeks with cookies, trail mix, and stacks of waffles. Diet for short-term weight loss, work out for long-term maintenance and pleasure. I love my body, but I have a lot of anger about weight loss. It goes in two opposite directions. On the one hand, there’s the stupid diet industry that tricks people out of their money and makes them feel defeated, hopeless, and like they lack “willpower” or “motivation.” On the other hand, there are all the defensive fat people who can’t pass up an opportunity to naysay every person who tries to lose weight, fit-shame anyone who’s Not Fat Enough (an actual acronym some acquaintances use), and spend their time trying to debunk or discredit peer-reviewed clinical studies. From time to time, I am fit-shamed by someone who didn’t know me when I was fat. I explain that I used to be obese, that I had thyroid disease and a cancer scare and fibromyalgia and migraines and a parasomnia disorder (and I can keep going if you’re interested). “Oh,” they say. Nobody has ever apologized for the fit-shaming, for calling me a bitch or telling me to F off. I suppose it’s assumed that I understand, because “real” thin women deserve such treatment, and I was simply collateral damage. I’m also mad because the process is completely different for men than it is for women. My husband used to weigh 305 pounds, and he was still over 270 when we met. He taught me everything I know about weight loss. He taught me to track metrics, and he’s even helped me set up mathematical models to figure out patterns. We’ve lost 100 pounds between us, and most of it, we lost as colleagues, partners, and gym buddies. BUT. Every step of the way has been different. People constantly told me to “be careful.” Nobody said it to him. A shop clerk pantomimed vomiting, suggesting I must be bulimic to wear the size I do. “Um, I’m a marathoner,” I replied, horrified to my core. I tried to make myself vomit once, when I was 12 and accidentally ate a bug, but I couldn’t do it even then. I don’t hate my body. I’m also sane. Does anyone understand how rude it is to joke around or hint that someone is mentally ill? Men who decide to lose weight don’t get lectured by their friends about body image and anorexia and fashion and celebrity obsession. My man is “big.” He’s been a football player, a lumberjack, and a hockey player. He doesn’t get told to “be careful” – even when he’s sharpening a chainsaw or lighting stuff on fire. He’s strong enough to lose weight if he wants, to “train” – but women aren’t strong enough to be strong. I’m supposed to be passive, curvy, and feminine, not active, muscular, and sweaty. I’ve had a foot in both worlds. Incontrovertibly, being fit is better than being unfit. It’s useful and convenient and it’s far more physically comfortable. The comparison is precisely the same as having money vs. being poor and in debt. Why would anyone ever go back? At 22% body fat, why would I want to be 35% body fat again? It’s not something I would set about to do on purpose, in the same way that I would not set about accruing $20,000 of debt. Weight gain is basically something that “just happens,” and we accept it, in the same way that debt tends to “just happen.” The same way that health problems tend to “just happen.” The same way that clutter “just happens.” Fitness levels like mine don’t happen by accident. It’s intentional, the way I do most things in my life intentionally. We don’t know what we don’t know. I never knew I could be as strong as I am now. When I asked doctors what I could do differently, they replied, “I don’t know what to tell you.” There weren’t any athletes in my family. I didn’t really know any fit people. I assumed that the thin people I saw just came that way, in the same way that jays are blue and sparrows are brown. I shut down a few conversations over the years, suggesting that I try losing weight or going to the gym, because what I had been told about thyroid disease and fibromyalgia said that I couldn’t do either. I’ve heard other people say that it is “physically impossible” for them to lose weight, and in my mind, it wasn’t even a question. I just was the way I was. Past Self never would have believed a word I have to say about health, fitness, or weight loss. “Past Self, being fit feels like being a millionaire.” “F Off, Future Self.” This is what I think. I think it’s a thousand times easier to change your body than to change your body image. I think the sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction we often feel toward our bodies comes from a feeling of being physically off in some way. Maybe it’s being constantly sleep-deprived or dehydrated, having imbalanced gut flora, a micronutrient deficiency, overloading our organs with too much sugar, too many calories, too many food additives, straining joints from excess body weight, relying on pharmaceuticals to deal with the side effects of our biologically inappropriate diets. If a single one of those factors applies, why blame that off feeling on magazine photos? There is no way to objectively quantify how someone will feel when beholding a fashion model of any size or appearance. We can objectively quantify what we eat and analyze a wide range of health metrics with laboratory tests. Given our society’s mortality statistics and reliance on prescription drugs, anyone under 35 should take this under consideration. Anyone over 35 already knows that the older we get, the more we start to suffer the side effects of our lifestyle preferences. I stopped losing weight. I made a decision. “I tried being fat but I had to quit.” Nothing about being “curvy” worked for me. I chose a path, an uphill and muddy path. I shook off everything holding me back, from ignorant doctors to inherited family beliefs to expectations of appropriate female behavior to food preferences. I quit drinking soda and eating breakfast cereal. I paid attention to my habits and became more aware of my body. I quit planning my vacations around what restaurants to try. I quit insisting on ordering two appetizers and a dessert. Very little remains the same in what I eat, where I eat, how often I eat, or how much I eat. I divorced Past Self and Past Self’s destructive, short-sighted habits. I made a radical change. I decided that I wouldn’t be fat anymore, that I would be at least a little stronger every year. Two years in, I’ve maintained that. I only wish I’d known to try it sooner. I am hereby declaring the Monday after New Year’s Day to be PROJECT JUBILEE. A jubilee is a festival, but traditionally it referred to emancipation, forgiveness of debt, and pardoning of sin. We’re going to take this day and clear the decks of old projects. You are now free, officially FREE, from obligations that Past Self tried to assign to you. There are real obligations that should be upheld. We are obligated to respect other people’s boundaries, follow the law, care for our bodies and our personal surroundings, return books we’ve borrowed, and accept the consequences of our action and inaction. Universal laws apply to us. That being said, we tend to feel a lot of guilt, shame, defensiveness, and stuckness about our unfulfilled commitments, most of which are figments of our imagination. You never have to finish a book that bores you. You never have to “catch up” on reading old magazines. You never have to test every recipe you save. You never have to finish every craft project you start. You never have to repair anything you aren’t using. You never have to use all the materials you chose. You never have to make anything just because you chose the pattern. You can rip out yarn and use it for a different project, or give it away. You can THROW AWAY incomplete cross stitch projects – the materials are only a couple of dollars. You never have to make a quilt, crochet an afghan, or knit a sweater if you don’t want to. You don’t have to finish projects you chose for yourself. You also don’t have to do projects you promised you would make for anyone else, especially if they were planned as gifts. Nobody wants a gift that felt like a depressing burden to create. Nobody wants to feel tainted by the funk of procrastination. Nobody wants to be emotionally linked to guilty or pressured feelings. Do a favor for everyone involved, release yourself from the project, and just get together and do something fun with that person. You can explain the concept of the Project Jubilee. Or, of course you can skip that, because your chosen person may never have known that you obligated yourself to that project. Let it go. Maintain the relationship, talk, laugh, spend time together, and let the mythical handmade gift fade back into the ether. A couple of people have promised to make things for me that never materialized. I don’t mind. It’s true that I’d feel better off if I never heard about these plans. Then I’d never be the wiser. I’d never know what I was missing. If one of these kind folks did make something for me, while working in secret, I’d be elated! It would be a massive surprise. Promising a project in advance eliminates that potential for surprise. It also expands the risk of disappointment. Past Self had a lot of fantasies about Present Self. Past Self thought we’d like things we never really did wind up liking. Past Self was terrible at estimating how long things would take and how we would prefer to spend our time. Past Self always thought we would be more interested in anything boring, messy, or difficult. Past Self loved to dump the debt, cleanup, and healthier behaviors on us. We can forgive Past Self, move past it, and try to be kinder to Future Self. The illustration for this post – take a look at it. Cute, isn’t it? I inherited it from my Nana. In the same closet was about 80% of a child’s sweater in peach yarn. I was the only granddaughter, and I’m pretty sure that sweater was meant for Past Jessica 1979. Judging by the pattern on this tea towel (and its cultural insensitivity), it’s significantly older than that. Perhaps having five children and eight grandchildren had something to do with the small stash of unfinished projects. I don’t judge. If the tea towel had been finished and used, it would surely have been worn to a rag and thrown away by now. If the sweater had been finished, I would have worn it and outgrown it within a year. Finding those projects made me feel a strong family connection; what I really inherited was the desire to start making more things than I could finish. Or wanted to. How do we evaluate our incomplete projects? I once finished a knitted toy for a child who wasn’t even born until I’d already been stuck in the pattern for a few years. The child for whom it was originally intended had long outgrown it. I didn’t realize it would take weeks of work. I also knitted about half a sweater for myself before losing 25 pounds. That one I ripped. We can pause and ask: Would I have chosen to start this project from scratch today? Do I feel excited about working on it RIGHT NOW? Can I finish it by the end of the month? What is my track record of finishing projects? Would I be better off if I shifted my focus toward something else, like my finances, my health, or my living situation? I changed my relationship toward unfinished projects. I looked around and realized that my crafting was taking over my living space. I decided to quit starting new projects or buying new supplies, materials, books, or patterns until I was done with everything I had begun. It took 10 years. I wound up giving away all my knitting and crochet stuff. I gave away some cross stitch kits, still in the package. I let go of the fantasy that I would ever make the time to learn to weave or make lace. Instead, I reached my goal weight, ran a marathon, wrote some books, and learned to play the ukulele. I could get up and acquire everything I need to start a new project, today, because I still have all the skills. What I’ve done is to let go of the clutter, the guilt, the looming deadlines, and the shopping trips. I’ve gained peace of mind, extra closet space, and room in my life for fresh possibilities. I declared my own Project Jubilee, and now I pass it on to you. How does freedom taste? New Year’s Resolutions are seriously unhip, as far as I can tell, but that’s never bothered me. I thought I would share my process publicly as I work on my goals and resolutions for next year. Maybe it will change someone’s perceptions about the usefulness of an annual review and strategic planning session. Yesterday, I posted my annual review, sharing my successes and failures from 2015. I like to make plans for all the areas of my life, plus at least one ‘stop’ goal for a habit I want to eliminate. These are decisions. Formalizing decisions and holding ourselves accountable for them has radical power. First, allow me to recommend the book on which I have based my New Year’s planning for the past 16 years. It’s called Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny S. Ditzler. I always used the 1994 edition, but I decided to buy a digital copy and realized that it’s been through a few editions since then. As I flip through it, it appears to have been upgraded! The life wheel illustration on page 172 changed my life. If I ever meet Jinny Ditzler in person, I’ll have to restrain myself from shaking her hand way too long, or tackling her in an unsolicited bear hug. A resolution is a commitment to do or not do something. It’s open-ended. An example of a resolution is when I decided to double my cruciferous vegetable consumption. Other examples include walking every day, setting a bedtime alarm, flossing, and packing a lunch. Resolutions can wind up significantly exceeding any goal we might have set. The main pitfall is when we shrug and give up the first time we “blow it” and “break” the resolution. The idea is to bring our attention to the area of the desired habit, hitting the mark more and more often until it becomes a natural part of our day. First we’re aware of it, then we’re trying it, then we’re doing it a few days a week, and eventually we no longer have to focus – we just do it. Flossing two days a week is better than no days. Perfectionism is the death of resolutions. The idea that a habit takes “21 days” is a totally false urban myth. It varies from person to person, but the average is more like 66 days. A goal is specific, measurable, and has a time dimension. (There are various definitions for the SMART goal acronym, all of which are helpful). An example of a goal is when I ran the Portland Marathon in 2014. Other examples are reaching a goal weight, getting rid of a storage unit, and paying off a credit card. The main pitfall of a goal is to feel “done” and not think about what happens afterward, meaning we often wind up right back where we started. This is why it helps to make goals and resolutions that work together, such as “weigh the ‘healthy weight for my height’ [goal] and cut back on treats or going out if my weight goes up more than 3 pounds [resolution].” The concept of the ‘stop’ goal is a big part of how most people define a New Year’s Resolution. It might be something like ‘stop smoking’ or ‘stop biting my nails.’ I had a conversation last weekend with a grocery clerk that went like this: Me: “Are you making any New Year’s Resolutions?” Clerk: “MAYbe. I just decided to quit chewing my fingers after 20+ years, and it’s been three weeks.” Me: “Wow! You have the power to make a decision like THAT [snapping my fingers]. That’s really strong. It’s like, ooh, what next?” Clerk: “Yeah!” This happens all the time. We have a moment of clarity, when we realize that we are annoying ourselves and we don’t have to do it anymore. The sort of change that comes from a lightning bolt realization is a permanent sort of change. I’ve experienced these, for instance when I realized that I always spilled in my lap when I ate on the couch, and I started eating all my meals at the table instead. At the New Year, I rack my brain and try to come up with the most obvious areas where I hold myself back. Last year, it was my super-irritating habit of leaving tissues in my pockets and running them through the washer and dryer, where they shredded all over everything. Goodbye and good riddance to that! Working on goals and resolutions with someone else can be tricky, but the fact that my husband was willing to do my New Year’s process with me is part of why we’re married now. Last year, we started meeting for breakfast every Saturday to go over our goals. We made a spreadsheet with goals on the 1-year, 3-year, and “Blue Sky” time horizon. He busted through all of his goals for the year in three months. For this year, I had the idea of taking off for a weekend every three months for a quarterly review. He liked that idea. We’re planning to go camping in March and September for this purpose. We already do a New Year’s planning session, and the summer is covered by my July birthday and our August wedding anniversary, when we also discuss goals. The reason this is a romantic, fun activity for us is that we see goal-setting in a positive light. We’re rushing toward things that make us happier and more fulfilled. We’re casting aside negative habits and traits that feel much better when they are gone. We remind each other of how far we’ve come. We are each other’s cheerleaders. One term for this is ‘accountability partner.’ It doesn’t have to be a romantic partner or spouse, but for Obligers especially it can help to have someone to remind us of our decisions. Since we started dating, my husband and I have lost 100 pounds between us, stopped drinking soda, and paid off over $20,000 in debt. Those are big highlights, but we’ve also done a bunch of smaller-scale stuff. Our life together is more streamlined, both more relaxed and more productive than when we were single. Okay, now for the process of setting down goals and resolutions for 2016! Couples stuff: We decided to have a set dinnertime every night. We’re adding quarterly reviews to our annual planning, going camping if possible. We’ve had a years-long agreement to go to ballroom dance lessons for a few months, and hopefully this will be the year we make that happen. [glares at ankle] Personal: One of my biggest regrets is that I decided to join Toastmasters in college, then never went back for a second meeting because it conflicted with an open mic night where this particular boy sometimes sang. “You have chosen poorly.” (Thus my past ‘stop’ goal of “Stop dating musicians.”) As with running, I feel that public speaking makes my legs shake, is extremely scary, difficult, contrary to my nature, and not something I would really voluntarily ever want to do, and thus likely to be really valuable. I REALLY REALLY HATED running for the first three weeks, but I forced myself to keep at it, learned to love it, and four years later I ran a marathon. I’m feeling similar resistance combined with awful curiosity, and knowing I will push myself to do this awkward, onerous thing. Future Self is shouting at me through a megaphone, and I hear her. “DO EEEET!” Career: I’ve never had my own business cards, and it feels like time to get a set made. My goals are to expand my coaching business and start a weekly (free) subscription newsletter. I’ve decided not to announce new books and writing projects until they are released, because discussing my projects and deadlines seems to do something weird to my creative energy. I published over 700 pages in 2015, so productivity is not my problem. Physical: I’d REALLY like to start running again and train for my second marathon now that my ankle is better. My overarching goal is to grow stronger, faster, and more agile at a pace that my body can sustain without injury. My focus will be on experimenting with a cross-training schedule that balances running with strength training and yoga. I will definitely run another marathon, and I’m allowing that goal to persist without a specific timeline. One specific goal I am making is to get a blood test to check my micronutrient levels. More Metrics, Less Guessing. Home: I’d like to learn more about interior design and make our new place look cute. It’s clean and organized, naturally, but I’ve never taken it past ‘comfortable’ to ‘beautiful.’ We’re putting in a vegetable garden (the third one in 3.5 years, Hope Springs Eternal) and I’m going to try growing saffron. ‘Stop’ goals: I’m struggling with how to phrase it, but I have been having a real problem injuring myself lately. In the last month, I’ve smacked my head three times on furniture and doorframes, drawn blood slamming my thumb in a drawer and pinching my finger in the gate, and generally bruised and banged myself up. “Stop beating myself up on stuff.” This is classic ADHD attention and body awareness stuff. I suspect that more yoga, dance, and meditation will help. I need to slow down and pay attention to what I’m doing, and to focus on being calm and graceful. My other ‘stop’ goal is to “stop rage-crying when I go through TSA secondary screening.” I need to find a way to “bend the knee” and deal with this obstacle. Obviously being a “Trusted Traveler” does not mean what I thought it meant, and IT IS WHAT IT IS. Suck it up, Buttercup. Lifestyle upgrades: We’re going to eat on the patio when the weather is warm enough, and I’m going to use it as my new writing spot. Do the Obvious: The most obvious thing for me to do right now is to focus on my business and start earning more money. A Quest: I took on a quest last year to be ready to go to a Polyglot Gathering and have at least a short conversation in more than one foreign language. Due to a sad ongoing family circumstance, I can’t make firm plans for the next unspecified number of months. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to attend the May event I wanted, but there are two positives. One is that there are also Polyglot Conferences in various world cities throughout the year. The other is that we’re signed up for the World Domination Summit in August! That’s a different sort of a quest, but a pretty great one. I need to dip my toe in and have at least one language exchange in which I talk to another living human. There’s no point spending as much time as I have in studying other languages without speaking them, although it is nice to go to the movies and understand at least parts of the dialogue in French, German, or Spanish. A wish: I wish to make a new friend in 2016. That’s a lot of stuff! I feel about 90% exhilaration and 10% pure dread. I have a couple of easy, specific, one-shot goals, like ordering my business cards and finding out where to get the micronutrient blood test done. I have a few habit and perspective changes to work on. I have a few special events scheduled. I have a few new projects. I have this public record of commitments, which is actually pretty intimidating. I do, though, have a long track record of positive change in my life, even counting all the times I’ve overcommitted or completely failed. I can look forward to liking at least parts of my life better by this time next year. How about you? What are your hopes and plans for the New Year? Doing a life review every year can be a delightful and revealing process. I started doing this in 1999, during my divorce, and I would say that my New Year’s review process is the single biggest factor in my ability to overcome problems in my life. It’s the driving force behind all my accomplishments. It’s also the main reason I ever do anything fun; I tend to be driven and hyper-focused, and I have to remind myself to fit in things like “listen to more music.” I want to share a list of highlights and neat things from my year. Then I’ll talk about my resolutions and how I did. Saw an orca family in the wild, complete with baby orca! Saw a mountain goat family in the wild, complete with kids, and one of them SQUEAKED! Saw my first pine squirrel and rough-skinned newt. Birds seen for the first time include the black skimmer, black-necked stilt, cinnamon teal, Forster’s tern, little blue heron, and reddish egret. Learned about virga and lenticular clouds. Did two backpacking trips totaling six days and four nights. (Goal: at least one trip). Learned to hang up and securely tie a bear bag. Carried my heaviest pack ever. Building my confidence and independence in managing gear. Went on three planned trips, to Victoria, BC, San Diego, and Las Vegas. Started this blog and posted over 700 pages, with more than 200 original illustrations and photographs. Maintained my schedule of publishing every business day. Surprised my parents by showing up unexpectedly at their 40th anniversary dinner, making my mom cry. Started my coaching business. Moved to a new house. Met and spoke with Gretchen Rubin and Robert Reich face to face. Completed an online course, The Science of Happiness. I highly recommend it! You can take it for free, self-paced, starting 1/5/16. Read 163 books, 70% nonfiction, 50,074 pages (averaging 307 per book). Listened to complete queue of 22 podcasts. My Resolutions: We started a new habit, Saturday Status Meeting, in which we meet for breakfast and go over our goals every week. This has been so awesome that it’s like Marriage 2.0. My husband blasted through all his goals for the year by the end of March. I wanted to get a guitar and learn to play as a 40th birthday gift to myself. I changed my mind about this a few months into the year, because I developed a problem with tennis elbow and I was in a lot of pain. That pain is still resolving many months later. I still want to learn to play guitar, and I probably will start within the next few years, whenever I can do it without a repetitive stress injury. Disappointing. My top financial goal was to pay off my student loan early. This did not happen. I paid $1182 toward it. What happened was that I did not publish the book I had planned. Apparently I have an emotional block about bringing in money, on top of my known issue with finishing projects. My real goal should have been to push through my monetizing block. I had a physical goal about healing the tendonitis in my ankle and learning what kind of exercises I could do to develop my body more symmetrically. I’ve made progress here. I learned a lot about physical therapy, yoga, the foam roller, and ice massage. I learned a few simple new exercises that have been really helpful. I was able to go on two backpacking trips in the fall, putting a lot of weight on that ankle with no problems. Just as I had started running again, a couple miles a week, I got blisters under my nails (from the hiking), and now I’m working on resolving that. I made a resolution to learn more about anatomy, and I guess I should have been more specific! I had a goal about working with my grandma on a family history project. That didn’t happen either. I am learning that making resolutions that involve another person’s participation rarely, if ever, works as planned. I had a goal of changing my relationship with books. I have definitely succeeded with this, although it was much harder and took much longer than I thought. My lifetime romance with the public library seems to be over. The last 3-4 times I went into a bookstore, including POWELL’S BOOKS, I came out empty-handed. I’m still working on reading through my personal collection, which represents maybe 10x more stored reading time than I had thought. I’ve become more interested in my own writing than that of others. I had a goal of reading and writing more poetry. I succeeded at this, and it was great! I read an average of a poem a day, some of which did nothing for me, some of which lit me up and took my breath away. In December, I discovered the poetry of Mary Oliver, and that alone made this resolution worthwhile. I wrote a few things of my own, mostly doggerel, and that was fun. I had three ‘stop’ resolutions, all of which I did. The first was to stop bringing home books until I had read everything I already have. I am proud to say that we moved with one fewer bookshelf (about 6’), I have no library books checked out, and I don’t even have a library card in our new city. The second ‘stop’ goal was to stop leaving tissues in my pockets. It seems that as soon as I brought my awareness to the constant problem of shredded tissues in the dryer, I was able to change my habits. The third ‘stop’ goal was to “stop sticking my oar in on no-hope conversations.” That has been huge. Of course it’s also resulted in my spending very little time on Facebook. I continued to maintain my new goal weight of “healthy weight for my height” according to Google, and now I’m closing in on two years as a size zero. I’ve figured out where I can buy clothes that fit. I’ve also continued to win the battle against night terrors and migraine. I DIDN’T HAVE A SINGLE MIGRAINE IN 2015! January 6 will mark TWO YEARS WITH NO NIGHT TERRORS! It has not escaped my notice that going two years with no migraines and two years with no night terrors both correlate perfectly with being at my goal weight and maintaining our decision to double (then double again) our cruciferous vegetable consumption. We had a three-year goal horizon for getting patio furniture (after we moved to a new place, which didn’t have a specific timeframe yet). This unexpectedly came about when we rented our new house, and it’s much nicer than the modest vision I had in mind. Overall, it was a hectic and sad year in many ways. The Grim Reaper has been hanging around and we’ve had a lot of depressing family news. For the first time, we traveled more than we wanted. We moved again, which was a good thing, but it came at a stressful time. I’ve had constant pain from one part of my body or another every day this year. Imagine being grateful that at least you still have all your toenails. On the other hand, our lives have improved. We love our new neighborhood. Our marriage is stronger. I started this blog, and somehow I seem to have reached a point at which someone in the world is reading it, somewhere, every hour of the day and night. I started my coaching business, and with it, a new income stream. I’ve reached a level of productivity and engagement with my work that I never knew was possible. We’ve been dealing with several very unfortunate things that can’t be controlled, but we’ve managed to shape our world in ways that were in our power to control. Tomorrow I’m posting about my New Year’s planning process. I’ll include the goals and resolutions I’ve chosen. My hope is that my idiosyncratic, sometimes silly and small-scale goals will make this kind of planning more interesting and lower-stakes for others. Screw New Year’s Resolutions. We are all perfect just as we are. Why change? Why change a thing? Let entropy do the work. Let’s make next year just like last year! By this time next year, I am going to: Be further in debt Have less money in savings Lose at least one more friend via social media Hold a grudge Take more things personally Gain weight Add body fat Lose muscle mass Lose cardio endurance Lose flexibility Have more clutter Procrastinate more Leave more projects incomplete Keep paying on my storage unit Spend more total hours watching TV and movies Spend more total hours playing games Generally stare at a screen as often as possible Forget old skills, like playing an instrument or speaking a foreign language Spend more time consuming than creating Sleep-procrastinate and be as tired as possible every day Replace any passion in my life with food Convince myself that New Year’s Resolutions are for suckers Try to be more cynical I have all the motivation and willpower I need to do everything on my list! I woke up in Past Self’s bed, wearing Past Self’s nightgown. I took a shower and used her soap and shampoo and even her razor. I know she won’t mind; she’s Past Self and she won’t be needing it anymore. The trouble with Past Self is that when she moved out, she left all her junk behind. My closet is full of her clothes, my shelves are full of her books, and my fridge is full of her leftovers. What. A. Slob. Past Self, I’m so tired of cleaning up after you all the time. Past Self isn’t completely selfish, though. In fact, her rationale for most of the clutter she brought home was that she thought I would want it. Apparently she thought a bunch of crumpled receipts were my thing. Judging by my bookshelves, she also had some pretty misguided ideas about what I would want to read. She made all these queues and playlists for me, not just of books but of movies and music and articles and YouTube videos. It’s like, doesn’t she have anything better to do? Why does she have to keep trying to decide what I do in my spare time? At least she finally quit buying me craft supplies, like I was really going to want her to plan my next 10-15 years’ worth of leisure time. You don’t own me, Past Self! What a control freak. I’m in this limbo period right now. I’ve finally managed to wind down my compulsive media acquisition, so I can work through the backlog, either reading/listening to items or editing them out of the list. I’m trying to develop a sense of how many books, articles, podcasts, etc. I can process in a day and in a week. I want to be current. I want to let go of any attachment to the idea that I will “catch up” with items that may date back to 2007. Similarly, I am working on a vision of how Future Self is going to live, and what her material surroundings will look like. See, the thing about Future Self is that she is going to wake up in my bed one day. She’ll have to deal with the ramifications of my choices, for good or ill. I can leave her stacks of bills, piles of dirty laundry, and boxes full of clutter. I can also choose to treat her to something nice. I could get her a bouquet for tomorrow. I could send her money. I could surprise her with her dream home one day. All I have to do is to figure out how she would want it decorated. What kind of stuff will Future Self have? What is she going to want? If we started with a clean slate, how much of my stuff and Past Self’s stuff would she wish she had? Unless she goes to live full-time at a luxury resort, I can assume she’ll want furniture and dishes and laundry detergent and all the dozens of other basic household items. Those are things she can get anywhere. It’s the personalized stuff that’s under scrutiny. How many hard copies of photographs and documents and academic papers will she want? How many ornaments and decorations and bits of bric-a-brac? Is she really going to want to re-read everything I think she will? Is she still going to like the same music as me? Is she going to fit in my hand-me-down clothes, and will they still be in style? I know I’ve had to have these same conversations with Past Self, because she kept buying me clothes that turned out to be four sizes too big. She also left me a lot of boxes of random stuff. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, Past Self, I just wish you’d saved your money and sent me on a Parisian vacation instead. When I picture Future Self, I like to think of her having more freedom and more options than I do now. I like to think she’ll be able to travel more than I do. I like to think that her house looks intentional, that she has some kind of readily apparent design sensibility on display. I like to think that she’s fit and stylish and that she has better hair than I do. When I think of the technology that will be available to her, I quiver a little. She’ll be reading books my favorite authors haven’t even written yet and listening to music that doesn’t exist. GPS will be better, search engines will be better, and there will be hundreds of incremental improvements and innovations I can’t even imagine, but she’ll be able to take them for granted. If I saw her phone right now, I’d probably cry. In my lifetime so far, I’ve seen a lot of things become obsolete and fall by the wayside. For example, I used to have a push-button phone that picked up AM radio in the background, but only on my end. It had a three-foot cord. I’ve also spent countless hours in thrift stores that are chock-full of fugly castoffs, like an “Aisle” of Misfit Toys, but for clothes and lamps and plates. It makes me skeptical about material objects. They seem so desirable, until the zeitgeist blows by and they start looking shabby and lame in comparison. When Past Self and Future Self are separated by more than five years, it’s safe to assume that Future Self is not going to feel aesthetic delight in Past Self’s tacky, shopworn choices. Future Self may be traveling the world, living out of a suitcase, and not interested in most physical possessions of any kind. “Live each day like it will be your last.” This advice is a bit suspicious. As a medievalist, I’m all in favor of the occasional memento mori, and it’s Halloween season, but, well… MORBID! If I really started thinking about dying tomorrow, I would spend the rest of the day sobbing my goodbyes into the phone. It would be like drunk-dialing “I LOVE YOU, MAN! NO, I REALLY REALLY LOVE YOU!” except nobody’s later memories of that day would be at all amusing. Also, I would focus much too much on eating multiple flavors of Oreos, on top of my other favorite foods, such as sauerkraut and pickles, to the point that if I did live another day, I might wish I hadn’t. On second thought, let’s not go to Memento Mori. Tis a silly place. What I’d really like to talk about is what would be different if we knew we were going to live forever. What would you do every day if you knew you never would die? The first thing I’m thinking is that I would be very worried about taking care of my gums. I’m 40, and I already know my body is capable of aging. There is no reason to assume that immortality would come with eternal youth. Better start being more careful with the sunblock. Money is a question. There are two ways of tackling the fiscal aspects of living forever. Either you assume the law of compounding will work in your favor, or you look around at the elders in your acquaintance and guess which ones feel they have adequate wherewithal for their golden years. Yikes, right? Taking care of Future Self becomes a much bigger deal when thinking in centuries rather than decades. In some ways, we are rather like immortals. My chances of living to 40 as a woman would have been fairly low in most cultures throughout human history. My chances of living to 70 would have been considered low through most of the 20th century, even in the wealthiest, most advanced nations. Now, I have to assume I will live to be at least 85 as a matter of pure common sense. If I accidentally live to be 120, that’s an additional 35 years of inflation and savings I need to calculate. Prudent financial planning demands that I be as optimistic as possible about my potential lifespan. Money is only one aspect of planning to live a long life. There is this whole concept of “retirement.” I am just as skeptical of this as I am of the idea that we should live each day as though it is our last. This is partly because I used to sit at the desk of a man who had retired, only to find out that he had cancer a couple months later. I’m not sure he made it six months. (He was a sweet person; may he rest in peace). It’s fairly common for people to die shortly after their retirement. I’m young yet, but in some ways I “retired” at 35, and I can tell you something: IT IS BORING. After spending the first year taking two or three naps a day, and mastering all the crops in Farmville, you just need something more. That something turns out to be this little thing they call WORK. This is the most interesting part of the idea of living as though we will live forever. What would we do with the time? What sort of project would be stimulating and challenging enough to keep us going? Ice sculpture? (Channeling Bill Murray here). Mastering chess? Writing a series of fantasy novels? Painting an epic ceiling? Ridding the world of extreme poverty? Developing a new variety of fruit? I mean, TV would have to be significantly better than it is now for me to want to sit there and watch it for a few million years. On an epochal time scale, we can dream of accomplishing amazing things. Imagine building something like the Great Wall of China in one lifetime. Of course, the entire point of this exercise is that we should be imagining building anything in one lifetime. Do we really know how much we can bring into the world in even as little as three years? What is the longest we have spent focused on one endeavor? The truth is that most people’s outrageous dreams are completely feasible with existing resources and technology. It’s a mystery why we don’t go after them and make them happen. We most likely don’t have endless eons to bring our wishes into existence – although so far, I’m 100% successful at immortality – and it only makes sense to make the best possible use of the time we have available. This is one of the great questions that divides my people from ordinary folk. Believe it or not, there are people who go through life utterly unconcerned about their physical possessions. They have what they need, they can find it when they want it, and they get rid of things that have outlived their usefulness without a second glance. The general belief of such folk is that if it’s in a box, it’s not getting used; therefore, you can just… throw it away. I know, right? Crazy. Boxes, according to this theory, are for very specific uses. They are required for shipping most things by most methods. They make it easier to carry stuff. They can be used to group like things together, making them easier to find. They are essential when moving to a new home. They can be used to store things that are used infrequently, such as holiday decorations. They occasionally add marginal resale value to collectibles or electronics. Cats like them. Other than that, why put something in a box? What is most interesting about this is that my people always have boxes, but somehow manage not to use them for many of the purposes that an ordinary person would. My people are not ordinary; they are extraordinary. They are creative, sensitive, divergent thinkers, better suited to coming up with 1000 uses for a brick than to following a numbered list of instructions. Amalgamations of loose items intrigue and inspire them. That’s why their cars tend to be full of random stuff, and their dining tables tend to be covered by random stuff, and their countertops tend to be buried in random stuff, and their closets tend to be full to bursting with random stuff… It’s basically an allotment of art supplies. When my people get ahold of a box, it quickly gets filled, as it’s the most expedient way to clear space to fill up with more awesome (read: more recent) things. As often as not, the box has been filled by someone else, probably during a hurried, disorganized move. This box probably has lots of friends. None of them are labeled, because what are we, fascists? In fact, my people are notorious for referring to organized people as Nazis, which is heartless and rude and also a cliché, but it does tell you something about their level of frustration with life’s many convergent, left-brain rules. One of those rules is the universal law that disorganized things in unlabeled boxes are hard to find later. Another reason my people keep things in boxes is that the very thought of opening the box and sorting its contents fills them with waves of nameless dread. They can’t bear the tension and stress and anxiety of being faced with all those decisions. Do I need it? Do I already have another one? Am I violating a moral precept by throwing it in the landfill? (We forget that we turn our own dwellings into de facto landfills…) Is it moldy or broken or disintegrating, and can I stand the pain of knowing it’s wasted and ruined now? So much better to close the box again and put it back. As long as that box is sitting there in its familiar, unopened state, its contents revert to the Platonic ideal, extremely valuable, easily convertible to piles of hard cash, perfect and stylish and gleaming. That box holds POTENTIAL. Boxes of misc (pronounced ‘misk’) are like the Sphinx’s last riddle. You could earn a doctorate by analyzing the contents of a box of misc and figuring out what to do with it. It never fails. When I come in to work in a client’s home, there will be a box that is 80% one type of object, which should be fairly straightforward. Ah, but it will also contain: a coin, an office supply, a piece of hardware, a button, some dry pens, and some junk mail. These have been random loose items that were tossed into the nearest open box during a cleaning spree or moving extravaganza. The presence of these miscellaneous items can turn a box of clothes, books, or kitchen supplies into THE DREADED MISC. Panic-inducing, mind-boggling, willpower-depleting MISC. It’s a form of invisible packing material that is made by Dementors in a dreary factory in Northumberland. Then I come along and wave my magic wand. Put the pennies in a jar, throw the rusty paperclips in the recycle bin, open the six-year-old junk mail and dispose of it. Hey presto! The box of misc (THE DREADED MISC) has transmogrified into common, everyday objects! Astounding. Another type of box that confounds my people is the box of dead relatives’ personal belongings. That stuff has a half-life. It’s absolutely standard to see hair brushes with hair still in them several years after their owners pass away from this world. Opening what is most likely a box of old pots and pans or mass-market paperbacks from the 80s is like defusing a bomb. An aura of grief pours out twelve feet in every direction. I’ve never been called on to help go through grief boxes. Generally I assume at least a decade has to go by before anyone is prepared to deal with the sadness of them. It’s yet another example of how we always isolate ourselves just when we need help the most. Don’t face it alone! Why is it in a box? Because someone else put it there. Because there’s nowhere for me to spread out the contents for sorting. Because I might be moving again soon. Because I’m actually a neat freak and it’s tidier to keep it all in my storage unit. Because I know exactly what’s in there, and I’m extremely emotionally attached to it, even though I don’t use it or look at it. Because I’m afraid it will get wrecked if I take it out to display it. Because I’m waiting for it to be worth something so I can recoup what I spent on it. Because it stacks better. Because I spend my money on things other than end tables and nightstands. Because I don’t want to set aside the time to deal with it. Because I’m afraid there might be a spider in there. Because it’s dusty and moving it will aggravate my respiratory issues. (As if the dust isn’t already doing that). Because it’s heavy and I’m physically unable to move it. (A great reason not to have it). Because the thought of getting rid of anything in the box is heartbreaking. Because I can’t think straight right now. Because I’m tired. Because I’m waiting for the motivation. Because I’m used to it. Because I don’t know how to proceed. Because I believe I can stop the passage of time by living in a static environment. Going through boxes is a way of getting caught up to the present moment. At some point, Past Self made a little time capsule, preserving things that Future Self may find cool or interesting or useful. Present Self probably has a better idea of what Future Self is going to want; after all, Present Self may be living further down the timeline than Past Self imagined in the first place. I still have books that Past Self 2007 thought Past Self 2008 would have read by now. It’s nice to think of Past Self sending us gifts. Charitable, anyway. What is more likely is that Past Self had a warped view of how we spend our time, what we think is truly important, and how much we enjoy cleaning up Past Self’s messes and paying Past Self’s debts. We can pause to reevaluate. It’s no trickier than readjusting your seat and mirrors after someone else drives your car. Stop and look in those boxes. Exorcise your misc (THE DREADED MISC). If it’s stuff you love, take it out and display it. Otherwise, feel free to let it go and look to the future instead of the past. |
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
Categories
All
|