The Definition of Insanity

I have learned that when I need my husband's help on certain projects, moving heavy furniture for example, it is a good idea to foreshadow the event.

Last Saturday I said to him, "My office configuration is not working, I need to move my desk to a different wall." He turned and left my office without a word.

On Monday I showed him a diagram, "I've done all the measurements and taken into account the floor vent and it will work well on this wall." He examined the diagram for a moment and shook his head and walked out of the office without a word.

On Wednesday I asked, "So, when you are over your cold, maybe this weekend, could you help me move the furniture?" He grumbled something under his breath and changed the subject to asking me what I wanted for dinner.

This morning (Friday) I cornered him in the kitchen, "So, do you feel up to moving some furniture today?"

He stared at me rebelliously, "You and your moving of stuff. In my family, we put the furniture in once and it stays there."

"I'm sorry, I just realized that the desk took up way too much room in the spot that it is in. If I move it, it will open up the space considerably." I paused, "How does your family manage to get the right configuration the first time, anyway?"

He grinned, "I didn't say it was the best configuration, only that once it's there, it never changes."

Okay...

This evening I asked him, "So, are you going to help me move this furniture or what?" He grumbled and headed into the office, folded his arms over his chest and huffed, "So, what do you want moved where?"

A tense 30 minutes later, full of grumbling, sniping, and slamming of cords and power supply boxes, my office is rearranged and now has space in the middle to breathe. It looks great! As Dave puts it, I have a dance floor now. Not that I need a dance floor, but it feels far less claustrophobic in the new configuration.

All day I've been thinking of his explanation of his family and thinking to myself "Now I understand!"

The idea of not changing, even when something isn't working, is completely alien to me. Move it around, shake it up, put it in the wash, tie-dye it, bring the outdoors in and the indoors out. Change your perspective and re-invent yourself and your perspectives on the world around you.

See, it works like this...

Question: What is the definition of insanity?
Answer: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Go on, mix it up a little. Move your bedroom furniture around, change the paint color on your walls, and explore a completely different career or hobby.

If something isn't working in your life than it means that change is on the menu. Don't ignore it, shove the dresser to the right, add a touch of "What Color Is My Parachute?" and don't be afraid of the dust bunnies and dreams you stir up.

Life is too short not to get a new perspective on things.

Heave It At The Wall

My husband is my best friend. He really, really is. I can count on him to prop me up when I'm feeling down and I think he feels the same about me.

We've hit some huge potholes in the road of life lately. The main one being a reversal of what I was complaining about in my last entry...too many clients became too few clients. In a span of about two weeks I lost 45% of my cleaning clientele to the economy.

Forget recession folks, I think it's time to call a spade a spade and declare this a depression. At the very least it is definitely how my pocketbook is feeling these days.

Thankfully, my husband and I have each other to bolster our spirits. When things look grim we just dig in and work together. We're determined to survive and thrive.

I've still pretty new to this whole 'entrepreneurial thing' and my husband is even more so. However, he's catching up quick. We were discussing a class that he will be teaching in mid-March or April called Homebrewing 101. We finished a basic cost analysis, figured out what supplies and ingredients we would need and he will be solidifying the dates of the classes tomorrow with UMKC's community education department (Communiversity).

I was so happy to hear him planning the class, despite the economic setbacks (which have included him needing to obtain full-time work very soon) and said so. He grinned at me and said, "You know I don't like to give you compliments because you women get such swelled heads." He stopped and waited for me to throw something at him.

"But I really like the way you look at things. You've got this, 'Okay, let's heave some ideas against the wall here and see what sticks.' And then you come back and throw it up again and see if it sticks a second time. You try it out and if it doesn't work you move on. You don't put all your eggs in one basket or wait around for someone else to come rescue you and you never give up."

I resisted grinning like a complete fool. Some women want to hear how pretty they are or how great their hair looks. Me, I'll settle for being told I'm full of courage and pluck any day of the week. Courage and pluck lasts while good looks eventually fade.

The point of this entry is just what my husband pointed out. Take some ideas of what you want to do, who you want to be and heave them at the wall like they are pasta. What sticks? Toss it again. Does it stick a second time? Well heck, give it a try then. And if it doesn't work, try something else.

We only have this one life. Make it mean something, make it special, make it yours inside and out.

Heave it at the wall and see what sticks.

All Bullshit Aside...

Yep, you heard me right. Or should I say, write? That's what today's blog is about.

I came home, exhausted and in pain and said to my DH (Darling Husband-and he really is...darling, that is) - "I'm going to have to let some of my cleaning clients go. I know we need the money, but I was working away this morning and realizing I feel like I did when I worked in an office. I'm so busy getting there and working away that all creativity has been leached out of me. I can't even begin to develop story lines or round out my characters...because I'm completely in work mode! Something has got to give!"

Add to that the pressure my "life coach" is applying...

"How you doing on writing these days?" he asked the other day. "You know, NaNoWriMo is coming up," he pauses, "are you going to participate this year?"

I want to cry, hide under a rock, maybe even heave the rock in his direction...

I went to Red Room, a site that offers prizes for NaNoWriMo winners and had to copy and paste the following:

THE RED ROOM PHILOSOPHY

• Taking a writing class … is not writing.

• Therapy … is not writing.

• Attending interesting lectures about writing … is not writing.

• Reading books about writing or anything else … is not writing.

• Completing writing "exercises" … is not writing.

• Attending a peer critique writing group … is not writing.

• Feeling guilty all week for not writing … is not writing.

• Participating in NaNoWriMo … is you actually writing.

Save the seminar on publishing for after you have a finished, polished manuscript. Save the group therapy for another night of the week. Recognize that you are doing these other activities instead of completing a manuscript. If you want to leave a legacy of more than just having attended classes or reading the New York Review of Books with keen interest, you need to participate in NaNoWriMo.

If you truly do not feel ready to write what you want to write without more research and personal growth … you’re mistaken. The majority of the most brilliant writers in history had absolutely no training, useful industry information, or self-awareness. Stop talking and start writing.

And that's it, man. I mean, really, that is it. All bullshit aside. If you want to be a writer, then you have to do one thing, WRITE. That's it. The rest will follow.

And that is true about all things in life. If you want it, really, really, REALLY want it...

Then go out and get it.

Don't wait for someone else's blessing, for the clouds to part and the sun to shine down. Don't wait for 'that perfect moment' that never comes when all the stars align and a heavenly chorus begins to sing.

We make our own luck.

We make our own future.

Best get started.

Monkey wrenches

I awoke rather abruptly at 3:30 this morning. It wasn’t a bad dream or noise, it was just time to get up. I fought it for nearly an hour, then succumbed to the inevitable, took a shower and had some breakfast.

It will be a double-cup coffee day.

My latest reading assignment lasted for about one page before I was seized with the need to blog. It’s been a while, and so much has happened, I barely know where to begin.

In mid-April I attended a class on how to write, publish and market your first book. It was straight-forward, no-nonsense advice. The convener, Bobbie Christensen, laid it out in a well-organized format. Her biggest piece of advice was to treat writing as you would any business. Approach it as your business, be aware of the bottom line, and throw all that doe-eyed, dreamy artsy fartsy “writing is an art, a calling” out the back door with the trash. A few years back I would have run screaming from the room. But after nearly three years of entrepreneurship, it was more than appealing.

Don’t get me wrong. I am in love with the written word. I have been and can be as doe-eyed and artsy fartsy as they come. I can lose myself for hours in bookstores, just running my hands down the spines of books and imagining the person who wrote it. Occasionally I look back on my past writings, read them as if for the first time and think, “Holy cow, I wrote that!” And more than a few people who have read my various pieces had said, “Christine, you need to write more. You could be published, you’re that good.” And through it all, I have written because I loved it—the craft of it, the muse of it and the joy I felt as I created stories, poems or wrote essays.

I drove home from the class that night in April, my mind just spinning with ideas. I jotted down several book ideas when I arrived home and realized that I would be better off starting with some of the non-fiction topics I had been interested in and been threatening to write for years. The list grew, was re-arranged and evaluated. About a week later I sat down and began to write the first book, “Get Organized, Stay Organized.” Using Bobbie’s advice I will be selling my first book through an existing ‘sales vehicle’ – my organizing classes.

It took six weeks to complete the first draft and then four weeks for me to edit it. I was nervous, so there was a good deal of stopping and starting on the editing process. The second and third edits were complete in less than a week and the book is now waiting for the finishing touches (ISBN number and a photo for ‘About the Author’) before it will be shipped off to the printer.

I will be self-publishing this book. The numbers make sense (it’s far more profitable to self-publish if you can get the sales) and the risks are acceptable.

As soon as I finished the edits I began planning my next book. I plan on starting on that project next Monday, July 14. My goal is to complete three books this year and I think it is do-able, if I stick to a reasonable schedule of writing.

In the middle of all of this writing and editing a monkey wrench was thrown into the mix. Well, actually a couple of monkey wrenches.

First, I decided I had really had enough of employing staff and dealing with all of their issues (emotional, financial, etc.) and decided I could do a limited number of cleanings myself and make far better money than paying someone else to do it and only getting 40% of the cleaning fees. That was monkey wrench #1 – suddenly I was far busier than I had really planned on being. Not only was I cleaning homes, but I had several new organizing clients, was still writing the book and still a breastfeeding mom.

Monkey wrench #2 came on the heels of a phone call from my husband in the third week of May. I was just completing a cleaning when he called to inform me he had been fired. After working for the company for nearly five years, and being miserable in it for around four of them, I was actually quite relieved to hear the news. A week later he announced that he wanted to start a brewery. It seems that the entrepreneurial bug had bitten him as well.

We are still working on the details, on the basic research. What beer recipes to use, whether to be distribution-based or a brewpub, etc. I figure it will be at least a year before we are ready to open for business, but who knows, it might be sooner than that.

In the past three years I have learned to be flexible and keep my mind open to change. At any one time I have at least two main plans in action, and several more waiting in the wings to be activated if the tide swings in that direction. Life coaching is a good example. My studies and plans for opening a business as a life coach are on hold in one sense and very active in another. While I’m not planning on taking on any clients right now, my husband could well be considered my very first and most important client. I have committed myself to helping him in any way I can towards starting and running this brewery. This means that not only will I be handling the business side of it, crunching the numbers, researching the necessary permits and licensing and guiding the business towards success--I will also be working with him daily to motivate him, reassure and center my husband as he starts his very first business.


I hope that I will also be able to continue to write and publish and teach my classes. I have no doubt that life will also intercede at regular intervals to remind us both that we are parents first, life partners second and business owners third.

So what is the point to my telling you all of this?

Change, drastic change, is right around the corner. When you least expect it, perhaps when you are least ready for it, that’s when it appears. I spent too many years of my life fretting over the future, constantly questioning where I was going and how I was going to get there. Nowadays I just live. I dance when the beat changes, I walk barefoot in the rain and I adapt. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring and I have found that I like it that way. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll find myself on Oprah (just like my neighbor Christie suggested) and be able to spread the following message to millions of people struggling to find their way:

Be yourself
Don’t be afraid of change
Believe in yourself
Learn something new every day
Enjoy every possible moment
Speak to your strengths

Life your life, on your terms, in a way that makes you happy -- the rest will follow naturally.

Don't Be Afraid to ASK!!!!

Years ago I worked for a division of Marriott in the customer service department. Our offices sat above a large warehouse and trucks delivered dry and frozen goods to Marriott hotels and other clients (such as Outback Steakhouse) throughout the Bay Area. Vendors were always vying for our attention, and as a result, one day we received a visit from Douwe Egbert and the entire customer service department was taken down to their fancy van to sip coffee and listen to their presentation.

As I sipped my coffee, liberally dosed with creamer and sugar, the representative kept using the term ‘liquid coffee’ over and over. No one said anything and I just sat there confused until about the third or fourth repetition of the phrase. I raised my hand in the middle of his spiel and he stopped and said, “Yes?”

Feeling rather dense I asked, “I’m sorry, but you keep saying ‘liquid coffee’. Coffee in this form IS liquid, so I’m a little confused.”

The rep, bless his soul, looked surprised and rather sheepish. He thanked me for my question and commented that he was very happy I had spoken up. He then explained that he had been using a term that described a process that Douwe Egbert had been a leader in developing. They (Douwe Egbert) distill a condensed extract of coffee, keep it free of air or other agents that cause the bitter aftertaste in coffee, and re-constitute it with water for a fresh tasting coffee, that lasts longer and stores easily. But they were so used to the product, so used to using those suave terms like ‘liquid coffee’ that until I asked my question, this rep had been telling large groups of clients the same thing over and over. How many of them had not bothered to ask for fear of looking stupid?

Later in the day, several of my co-workers came to me and thanked me for asking the question. Each and every one of them admitted that they too had not known what he was talking about, but they had been too embarrassed to ask. It made me wonder just how many of us don’t ask questions, don’t put ourselves out there, for fear of looking ‘dumb’ or ‘asking a stupid question’. How many of us, when given instructions by our boss to do something just nod and then go away and stall on a project, because we don’t know how to do it, but don’t want to appear ignorant by telling the boss we need help?

Like that nice coffee rep, I too experienced an “oh, duh” moment a few years later. As a student of Rockhurst, I was expected to make an end of term presentation in my Theology class. I chose to speak about Joseph Campbell, the author of “The Hero’s Journey” who I had studied in depth a few years prior to the Theology class. I stood up in front of my class and spoke extensively about Campbell and his theories and how they had affected my views on faith and religion.

I finished my speech and I was so pleased with how well I had done, I hadn’t lost my place in my notes or forgotten the different points I wanted to make. That is until someone in the back raised his hand and said, “That was very nice but who is Joseph Campbell?” And right on cue, most of the rest of the class nodded and murmured the same question.

I had assumed, just as the coffee rep had done, that everyone knew about Joseph Campbell. It was a nice wake-up call and it reminded me that you have to lay the groundwork. Introduce a person, speak of their background, define a term, and describe the process it takes to get there. Without groundwork, others have no idea what you do or what you are talking about, and they lose focus on the important part of your message.

I’ve said before in my post “I Get to Be ME” that I was often referred to as the ‘know it all’. And it was at that very job with Marriott that I was labeled such. And while it bothered me to be labeled that way, it mattered far less than my quest for knowledge and willingness to share my knowledge did. I would rather put myself out there and be the ‘know it all’ because I asked or cared enough about my job and my co-workers to share the knowledge than to be the one who sat there quietly and said nothing when I did not understand. Knowledge should be freely given and received on both sides.

Ask and learn. Jump off the cliff and open your eyes to the knowledge, opportunities and life around you. Don’t be afraid, just open your mouth and ASK!

I Get to Be ME

I ran across a quote that struck a nerve in me. David Taylor, author of “The Naked Coach” wrote,

“…that when one is presenting, yes, the audience is thinking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and ‘How can I apply what the presenter is saying in my life or to help others?’ but, more than these two, they are asking themselves, ‘Does this person really believe what they are saying?’

And when the answer is ‘yes’, then the speaker is not only being more persuasive and having greater impact, they are also simply being themselves.”

I found myself reaching out and tracing those lines and nodding and thinking “Yes, yes, this is exactly the person I want to be!”

Recently I was reading Robert Ringer’s book “Million Dollar Habits” and stopped at the section of the book to answer five questions the book had posed:

• What do I enjoy?
• What am I good at?
• What do I want out of life?
• What’s the price?
• Am I willing to pay the price?

Under the first question I had a long list, two of which were quite relevant to the person I am evolving into today—‘teaching others’ and ‘changing lives for the better’. Under the second question, ‘what am I good at’ I found they repeated themselves, ‘helping others’ and ‘teaching others’. Excellent, I was on the right track.

In each answer I had also listed ‘writing’, which as you have probably noticed I do a fair amount of. And then it hit me—I picked up “The Naked Coach” and read the last sentence again.

“And when the answer is ‘yes’, then the speaker is not only being more persuasive and having greater impact, they are also simply being themselves.”

And I had to smile.

I had to smile because I realized I have now exactly what I always wanted to accomplish—the ability to be me. I get to be me every day. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone else; I get to be me, me, ME!

To put into some kind of perspective how deep a change and relief this is for me, I will need to take you back to a time in my life when ‘being me’ simply didn’t seem acceptable.

In my mid-20’s I worked for a distribution center in the customer service department. I was known as a ‘big mouth’ and a ‘know it all’ because when a question was asked of the group of us in general, I was likely to answer. It wasn’t that I was showing off, or answering a question I didn’t actually know the answer to, I was (in my mind) simply trying to help. I knew the answer, why not share it?

On the nights when I didn’t have my daughter to care for I would go to the local bar to enjoy live music and engage in one of my favorite activities – playing pool. I was good at it, damn good for a girl, and I regularly whipped the guys in singles or playing in doubles. I was relatively well-liked there and always invited to play on doubles teams by those who knew me. The guys would ask me “how’s it going” and I would tell them all about my beloved daughter and the latest funny story about her.

One evening, one of the guys I saw regularly leaned over and said, “Christine, you’re a nice-looking girl, and I can see you are a good person. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice. You would get so many more guys willing to date you if you would just not talk so much.”

He couldn’t have hurt me worse if he had slapped me. It was a firm reminder that who I was, the indomitable me, was simply not accepted.

I spent my childhood and adolescence asking my parents and my teachers, “Why do I need to learn this?” I never got a straight answer other than, “Because I said so.” And because of it, I fought learning the curriculum, fought doing what they tried so hard to make me do. I fought them until the day I left home, a mere month before my seventeenth birthday.

In those first few months of freedom I realized one very important thing…I wanted to LEARN. I saw the other teens my age returning home from school and I was suddenly gripped with such a thirst. I wanted to learn and grow and know and be so much more than I was. I wanted to jump up on top of all of the obstacles and stand upon them victorious.

I wanted to help myself to be that person I dreamed of being, and I wanted to turn around and help others who were standing there dazed or clueless or lost. As much as it would be possible to, I wanted to infect others with a love of learning and growth and change.

It took me years and years to get here, to this place where I am today. Despite my thirst for knowledge and change, I still lost my way—sometimes for weeks or months or even years. And I’m far from done; I’ve truly only just begun.

But I was very pleased to realize that I get to be me now. I get to be me, and I find that it is accepted and it is acknowledged, and I am the lucky one for it. Because now I really can help others, now that I’m comfortably myself at all times.

So now it is your turn. Ask yourself the question, “Am I being myself?”

If you answer “yes”, than congratulations, you are well on your way to changing your life. And if not, then don’t you think that maybe it’s time you got started?

You Don't Know What It's Like

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and cried, “You don’t know what its like to be sixty. You don’t know what its like to be this age and have no education, no money, and no future.”

No, no I don’t know what its like to be sixty. I don’t know what it is like to be sixty and uneducated, with no money and no future.

And God willing and the creek don’t rise, I never will.

But I do know what its like to watch someone throw their life away—one day, week, month, and year at a time. And I’ve spent nearly forty years doing just that and wishing it could be different, wanting so much to stop it from happening, and eventually banging my head against the wall and walking away in despair.

If she were here in front of me I would say, “It isn’t my life or my decisions that count here, it’s yours. What good does it do to cry and moan about the situation you find yourself in or bewail the years when you didn’t get the education, didn’t stay with Mr. Right, or didn’t pay your taxes on time?”

It does no good. None at all.

Look, I know what it is like to make mistakes. I know how it feels to flash back in time and see myself behaving like a horse’s ass and making unbelievably stupid decisions with my life. There are moments when they hit me, a snapshot of memory that makes me wince with regret and embarrassment. My stomach flips, I close my eyes, and wish to hell I didn’t remember things like that.

It is far easier to remember the bad rather than the good. We are so good at etching those painful moments deep into the flesh of our memories, deep into the folds of gray matter. The funny, positive memories don’t seem to have the staying power, the deep hooks to burrow in and stay. They seem so much less retrievable.

But it is what we do next with our memories, our guilt and shame, that matters so much more. We cannot change the past, we can only move forward. We must learn from the past, this is essential. But when those awful memories surface, do you flagellate yourself again, reliving the past in agonizing detail? Or do as I do and close your eyes, let the memory come, and then say…

That was the past.

That was yesterday.

And I live in today.

Let me learn from my mistakes

Let me grow as a person, and

Let me move on and be someone better.

You cannot progress into the person you want to be if you insist on re-living your mistakes over and over. You cannot improve yourself by continually revisiting past transgressions. By wallowing in guilt and despair you hold yourself back from becoming the person you dream of being.

Stop…doing…that.

I mourn for her. I mourn for the person she could have been. For the person she will never be, and for the person she chooses not to be. I mourn for her—and wish things could be different. I am afraid that I understand far better than she does what it means to be where she is now. Because, for her future, for her personally, there will be no change. Because she cannot see anything but this life, and these choices, and this life she has chosen for herself.

You cannot change her.

I can’t change her.

But you can change yourself.

I can change myself.

You just have to believe, really believe—and then take the first step—and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.

What are you waiting for?