Done for the Week: Crossing the Finish Line

Back from my day at the races.  But not back to earth.  Not yet.  And not for a while, if I can help it.

Here's the story of what I got done last week: 

Done for the Week:  Aug. 15-21, 2011

1. Completed Week 15 of 15-week triathlon training program, resting for race; ran twice; biked once; swam twice
2. Worked out and meditated several times with my training partner
3. Attended second Open Water Swim class
4. Swam across the lake--sort of 
5. Rented new, larger, more life-sustaining wetsuit (unlike the one I own, this one permits breathing, which I've come to appreciate--the hard way!)
6. Continued working on pre-race anxiety, mental training, pre-race nutrition and hydration
7. Packed to leave town for the race
8. Picked up race packet; bought stuff at the expo 
9. Shared pre-race dinner with my husband and training partner
10. Did gear check with my training partner
11. Finished the race!!!  Beat even my stretch goal
12. Celebrated with my training partner and friend, who also finished with strength and grace
13. Attended triathlon camp reunion, post-race
14. Helped youngest son prepare for first long-distance flight on his own
15. Finished No Death, No Fear:  Comforting Wisdom for Life, by Thich Nhat Hanh
16. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
17. Provided technical assistance to nonprofit organization
18. Meditated four times
19. Published 1 blog post
20. Continued reading Elizabeth George's In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner aloud with my husband
21. Continued work on current clients' projects
22. Attended Issues Night
23. Attended Jobs Prayer Vigil
24. Paid the monthly bills
25. Accomplished major cleaning/decluttering/rearrangement of main work room
26. Did laundry

Last week's focus goal was to "finish my training using the less-is-more and self-nurturing approach appropriate to the final days before the race."  Did that. 

Tuesday evening's pre-race swim across the lake proved even more of a hurdle than I had anticipated.  Last Monday I wrote about this planned workout that "I intend to get to the other side by any means necessary."  And by Tuesday night, I had delivered on that prediction.  The "means necessary" turned out to include yelling "Help!" in the middle of the lake when my extra small wetsuit and this year's two additional pounds combined in a way that was literally breathtaking.  After the motor boat came to my rescue, and I had regained my breath, but not my cool, I transversed about a third of the race distance using a "noodle."  Thus I joined the ranks of what my partner referred to as the "noodle girls."  A humbling, and scary experience overall.

Subsequent race preparation made room for learning all I could about how wetsuits can restrict breathing and contribute to panic attacks in the open water swim portion of a triathlon.  This led to re-thinking my sausage casing of a wetsuit, and deciding to rent one a size larger.  I also crammed in a short session in the pool on Friday trying out the borrowed suit.  The result?  I could breathe on race day, and made it all the way across the lake , without stopping to rest, or switching from freestyle.    Spent my way out a dilemma, but it was soooo worth it.

Last week's most important accomplishment--hands down--was finishing the triathlon.  Once again, I surprised myself by doing better than I expected.  I took 4:44 off the swim; 1:03 off T1 (the time spent shedding the wetsuit; getting on shoes, socks, helmet, Camelbak, and sunglasses; and, unfortunately discovering I had forgotten to unlock my bike before the race); 1:06 off T2 (bike to run); and 2:22 off last year's run time.  I added 1:18 to my bike time, but race officials had added 1.5 miles to the course this year.  My pace was just shy of 2 mph faster.  My net gain put me at 2:00:35--36 seconds over my "dream" goal of breaking 2 hours, nearly 2-1/2 minutes under my stretch goal of 2:03:00, and 4-1/2 minutes under the 2:05:00 I thought I would do.

Needless to say, I am ecstatic!  In my second tri, I moved from the back of the back of the pack, to a position near the middle--and in the top third of my age group. 

For today, I'm resting on my . . . ahem, laurels.  

My goal for the week:  come down gently, and as little as possible, from Cloud 9-3/4.

After a Horse Race, Back on My Own Horse

I made up a new life rule this week:  

Anytime I 

1) put in a full day shift collecting recall signatures at a polling place for a "spring" election (that's what they call this chilly, needed-my-gloves-and-long-underwear season);  

2) then stay up way too late waiting to learn of my candidate's narrow (204 vote) victory (for whom I, of course, did not electioneer while collecting recall signatures); and 

3) do so while continuing to put in hours on my two paid jobs, I am allowed to put off blogging until I have recovered.

So invoking that new rule, I did not blog Tuesday or yesterday, when all my free time was spent glued to the horse race for Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin.  

My obsessive self worries that, having broken my year-plus string of weekday blog posts, I will have weakened my commitment to being a serious blogger.   But even my two youngest kids, who take the usual young persons' stance toward adult preococupations, have exerted some energy to encourage me to slack off, and to lighten up about the possible downward slide.

I may attempt to make up the missing posts--and I may not.  Time, and personal energy, will tell.

This is not going to be a season of "business as usual," whatever that was.

Blogging in My Sleep

I came across an article this evening on "Navigating the Five Stages of Blogging Fatigue."  In case you're curious, and even if you're not, they are:  Excitement, Expectation, Frustration, Alienation, and Abandonment--a dead blog.

I'm fairly stubborn, and relatively indefatigable.  After more than a year, I am still pretty committed to continuing this endeavor.  I'm probably hovering somewhere between Excitement and Expectation, long after most bloggers have started to lose it.  But I am beginning to suffer from blogging while fatigued.

My husband keeps trying to convince me to relax my schedule, and to skip blogging on days when I get too late a start.  But the way things have been going lately, with work and family demands multiplying while my unpaid job as a citizen and activist explodes in intensity, I would skip more often than I'd blog.  

So tonight I'm making this small effort, instead of putting it off.  And I'm blogging about blogging.  

As a poet, I have (mostly) resisted the poet's self-indulgence of writing poetry about writing poetry.  I aspire to maintain a similar standard with respect to blogging.  So I vow to keep such dissipation to a minimum.

For tonight, though my pillow is lovely, soft and deep, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  (With apologies to Robert Frost.)

Done for the Week: Winning by Showing Up

Toward the end of last week, my mood went south. It seems unlikely that this was unrelated to spending less time exercising, meditating, being outside, and relaxing. Work was particularly stressful, especially when the websites I manage were both suddenly taken down--after I had spent considerable time redesigning both--because of an expired domain name. Communications concerning this impending action had been sent to obsolete addresses and unknown persons involved with the original site set up. This unexpected disaster took another half-day to resolve.


Life with my teenagers and my work-addicted spouse was not exactly a walk in the park either.

In the midst of it all, I got the following done:

Done for the Week:  Oct. 18-24

1. Completed tapering week of 5K training, ran twice
2. Completed 5K race, won my age group
3. Finished The Swimming Pool, by Holly LeCraw; To-Do Lists of the Dead, by Jonathan Katz; The Imperfect Birds, by Anne Lamott
4. Continued significant support to transitioning nonprofit organization
5. Worked my two part-time jobs--made significant progress on second website, strategically skipping a scheduled meeting to do so
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Meditated 2 times
8. Wrote 3 Gratitude Journal entries
9. Wrote 3 Morning Pages
10. Spent 3-1/2 hours working on my novel
11. Continued reading aloud Elizabeth George's In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner with my husband; went to Happy Hour, and to see The Social Network
12. Attended 2 yoga classes
13. Took my dog to the dog park once
14. Attended church
15. Helped sew grandson's Halloween costume
16. Called my mom twice
17. Spent time cleaning two of our three bathrooms

My most important accomplishment of last week, in red above, was completing the 5K I ran yesterday.  In the rain.  I won my age group, and for the first few minutes of post-race confusion in announcing the results, it appeared that I was my age group, until another woman came forward to claim second--and last--place.  Clearly, the secret to becoming a successful athlete, at least for me, is to continue training, stay alive and keep having birthdays.  My recent birthday put me into the advanced age group where I rose to the top!  But accolades aside, deserved or not, I was happy to complete the race in the 39 minutes I had set as a goal, and to run the entire time.

Last week's focus goal, as that of the previous week, was to spend six hours on my novel.  I managed less than four (#10 highlighted in green).  I did manage to adhere to my scheduled writing time, though the press of website work lured me into violating my rule of not doing other work during that time--thus, 3-1/2 instead of 4 hours.  Again, the plan to spend two hours writing "sometime during the weekend" was dashed on the rocks of my busy household and my emotional reactions.  I ended up spending time reading the novels of others, instead of writing my own.  This week, my focus goal will be to spend four hours writing.  Since I am meeting or coming close to meeting that goal, and since I need to feel successful, it seems prudent to aim for what appears to be realistic at this point in time.

Again, my secondary focus was and will continue to be exercise, meditation and housecleaning.  I fell short of my desired goals in all three of these areas.  (#1, #2 and #7 above, all highlighted in green.)  This week, I have decided to be more specific about what I'm aiming for.  I plan to meditate 4 times; exercise 4 times; and concentrate on catching up the laundry (which will involve donating a large portion of it), and cleaning and straightening one room.

And to keep showing up.

A Path Obscured

One of my favorite Pema Chödrön books is Comfortable with Uncertainty.  Because I'm not.


Wikipedia, that great lowest common denominator resource, tells us this about Pema Chödrön. 

Pema Chödrön (formerly known as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) is an American woman who was ordained as a Buddhist nun in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 . . . and a teacher in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa. The goal of her work is . . .  to apply Buddhist teachings in everyday life.

A prolific author, she has conducted workshops, seminars, and meditation retreats in Europe, Australia, and throughout North America. She is resident teacher of Gampo Abbey, a monastery in rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.

My meditation group, in Buddhist circles a sangha, was introduced to her writings by the minister who got us started and has since retired.  Part of our weekly meetings is devoted to group reading from a selected text, and we have spent a lot of time with Pema Chödrön, and with uncertainty.  But I guess I'm a slow study.


At present, my overly anxious mind is tantruming about a number of things whose outcomes I can't foresee.  I want to know, and know now, whether my blood pressure is going to come down; whether the SSRI discontinuation syndrome, triggered by my doctor's decision to switch me to another antidepressant, which required discontinuing the first medication, is going to be alleviated soon; whether I will be able to quell the panic I am beginning to feel about the possibility of panicking at the triathlon; and oh so many other things related to my overall stress level right now.  Of course, stressing about stress, and about uncertainty, are not helping any of this.  


But since I can't see around the corners just now, or very far ahead on the mist-shrouded path, I have decided to take the advice I gave a friend lately, a strategy that has worked for me in the past.  I am going to try to proceed from working decisions in moving forward.  For now, one working decision is to continue preparing for the triathlon.  Another is to do what I can not to invest in panic, and to be gentle with myself in accepting that this is one of my challenges right now.  I will act as if things will turn out okay, and as if I know what I'm doing.  I will just keep putting one foot in front of the other, as Therese Borchard (Beyond Blue) tells us to do.  I will keep training, keep practicing compassion for myself and others, and keep going.  Without attachment to certain destinations and results.


I will keep in front of me these words of 13th century Sufi poet Rumi:

Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Done for the Week: It's Called Sequencing

I am kind of dragging today.  I think I've been underestimating how much the triathlon training is taking out of me, and not making the necessary concessions to this final, fairly intense phase of preparation.  I've been pretty much just shoe-horning the increasingly lengthy training sessions into my already busy schedule, and have left very little time to stop, much less to smell any roses--if there are still any, given that I've taken no time to garden this summer.


Here's the list of things I got done last week.


Done List--Week of July 19-25

1.     Finished Week 10 of revised 14-week Sprint Triathlon training plan--4 weeks to go!
2.     Continued assembling tri gear
3.     Got bike fitted and tuned up, and had new seat installed
4.     Finished Love and Summer, by William Trevor; 
5.     Took my blood pressure daily
6.     Attended Transitional Jobs Collaborative meeting
7.     Spent two half-days training interim employee at nonprofit social justice organization
8.     Worked on website for Transitional Jobs Collaborative
9.     Continued my two part-time paying jobs
10.     Attended gathering of my husband's extended family
11.     Published 5 blog posts
12.     Meditated 5 times
13.     Wrote 7 Gratitude Journal entries
14.     Wrote 6 Morning Pages
15.     Continued cleaning campaign
16.     Continued mini yoga practice 
17.     Attended 3 yoga classes
18.     Continued writing novel
19.     Went out with my husband for Happy Hour; started reading aloud Elizabeth George's Deception on His Mind                                   
20. Decided to reschedule family trip to Ireland
21.     Called my Mom

Last week's focus goal was to continue writing, and making progress on my novel--once again, not something I found/made a lot of time for.  And given my energy level, and the demands of this last few weeks of triathlon training, I have decided to amend last week's plan to keep this is as my focus goal for the time being.  Instead, I will attempt to continue doing something each week to move this project forward, while recognizing that triathlon training is my de facto focus goal for this next four weeks.  In fact, it seems a bit disrespectful of this undertaking to imagine that I can achieve it without giving it much importance.  As the day of the race approaches, I am appreciating the magnitude of what I am trying to do, as a first-timer, and as someone who has not spent much time exercising in recent years.   

In red, fittingly, are last week's most important accomplishments--all triathlon-related.  

I intend to keep my eyes on the prize these next four weeks.  Not a trophy, or the medal all participants will "win," but the sense of accomplishment I have lusted after since watching my daughter cross the finish line at last year's race.  And the feeling of having reached down pretty deep within to find the courage/audacity and the perseverance and the faith to take this on.

Raising Recovering Procrastinators

Procrastinating does not seem to be a particularly high order talent.  Even monkeys do it! Nor are we likely to run short on practitioners, human or otherwise.  Experts appear to be divided on whether or not goofing off in the face of deadlines and commitments is an inherited trait.  But nature or nurture, by hook or by crook, I find myself surrounded by time-challenged individuals.


I don't remember my parents having major issues with delay when I was growing up.  But then I wasn't paying that much attention to them.  Housekeeping standards were somewhat lax, about what you might expect with a perpetually absent physician father and five children.  But sometime after I left home, I began to notice some organizational issues.  No one in my family of origin seems to be able to keep track of keys.  Most of us can't seem to mail packages.  And now that we depend on the mail to bridge the distances that separate us, annual holiday gifts and greetings routinely arrive embarrassingly close to the next occasions--Christmas gifts by Mother's Day, birthday greetings by Thanksgiving, etc.  "Manana" would be an apt motto for our family crest, if we had one.


In the family I am still bringing up, I am genetically related to two of my three children.  Two of my children are serious procrastinators--and I gave birth to only one of them.  They are also my two youngest, and still in a life stage at special risk for displaying such behavior.  Perhaps they will "mature out" of this unfortunate group.  But both foot-dragging siblings have grown up in the shadow of my most desultory performances.  And both seem firmly committed at present to living out this bequest. 


My eldest could be called an anti-procrastinator.  She is currently finishing her thesis while juggling family, work and a failing dog.  Her ubiquitous lists are not elegant--they litter her dining room table, written on every available scrap of paper--but they keep her on target.  Her thesis supervisor recently sent out a revised deadline which alarmed her, but she was told on inquiring that this prod was for "the other students"--the procrastinators--and not for her.  Over the years as a responsible and conscientious worker I have found myself in many "good" groupings--but not, in my memory, in the on-time, on-schedule category.  I am in awe of my daughter's capability in this foreign arena.


With all of my children, I attempted to teach what I knew (in my head, anyway) about how projects and deadlines should be handled.  When they were young, this teaching was at a nitty gritty level which required me to keep to the schedule with them, shaping long-term work in stages.  But when it was time for them to take on more and more ownership of their processes and products, when the scaffolding of my supervision was removed, the inner tarriers emerged.  Even my daughter, who would go on to timeliness glory, had to learn the hard way that self-created last-minute pressure hurts!


I suspect that at the heart of my family's difficulties with keeping on task is the contradiction between our free spirit personalities and immersion in modern enterprises and institutions which are better suited to automatons.  But calling ourselves dreamers, artists, or Bohemians doesn't really get us off the hook.  Because the habit of procrastinating doesn't just annoy the IRS and aggravate academic bodies--it kills dreams.  


So as with virtually everything we do after we have children, we have the responsibility to get it right, not just for ourselves, but for them too.  I keep on trying to learn what I can about getting the stuff I care about done, because I need to, and because they are watching.

Getting Into It

I recently came across the expression "If you can't get out of it, get into it," which was identified as a slogan used by Outward Bound to unfreeze climbers in mid-climb paralysis--  that moment when fear takes over and recommends staying right where you are, untenable though that position may be, for the rest of your life.  My attempts to verify the attribution confirmed the Outward Bound connection, but also revealed other "sources," including "my daddy" who "always said," and "the old saying."


In any case, I have found this gritty little phrase running through my head as I run through my days lately.  I seem to have gotten myself into a number of situations where the only way out is through, and "getting into it" the best option.  I am not currently clinging in fright to any cliff faces, but have found a more practical meaning for the adage, whether old or new. I use it to remind myself to adjust my attitude, to shift my outlook, to change the lens through which I view my experience.  And to "watch [my] language."


The New Age, pop psychology view that the way we talk and think about things influences our experience grows out of reputable linguistic theory and research.  It has lead to a proliferation of "affirmations," those pithy little mantras that many of us have been urged to employ.  Words taped to our bathroom mirrors, stuck on our dashboards, and lettered onto cards that spill from pockets and purses.  I confess to having a few such hopeful statements still lying around, left over from previous crises and rehabilitation projects.  I should also come clean about how little faith I was able to put in those words.  "I am a confident and worthwhile person" never really rang true for me, any more than did "I am a beautiful and fearless woman."  Maybe the problem lay in overloading, in pairing some out of reach trait with one I could sort of own up to.


Anyway, "getting into it," as I am thinking about it presently, is something different.  It has in common with affirmations a preference for positive language.  But in this case, I don't try to mesmerize myself with formulaic mottos.  Instead, I refrain from (excessive) grumbling, and from a posture of "slogging through" which focuses on the disagreeable aspects of undertakings.  I try to remember why I agreed to do the thing in the first place, and why it seemed important.  And I pay attention to the pleasurable parts of the task.  I summon energy and enthusiasm to combat the resistance I myself put up in the face of a grueling schedule of meetings, an endless round of web page changes and communication assignments.  I focus on the calm I feel as I restore order to a wrecked domestic scene.  I think about how soon my teenagers will leave home, and appreciate their presence even as I dive into motherhood's less enjoyable challenges.  


Is this just another "rose-colored glasses" advisory?  The sort of "bright siding" Barbara Ehrenreich writes about in her recent book?  Though I see the potential difficulties with this approach, on the personal level, where I live my life, it gets me through the dark times, and improves the quality of my days.  And as this is likely to be my only life, "getting into it" seems like the better choice.  This doesn't mean, of course, that I have sworn off swearing at the mountains in my path.  Just that I am not stuck in grousing mode, and can use other gears.  


And so, I'm off to another (damn) meeting--which I have waited six weeks for, and which will further some work I am trying to do, about which I care deeply.

I'm Not (Always) in the Mood

I'm going to come out of the closet (no, not that one) and admit to being in the ring with depression over the past few months.  My affliction, if it is that, is of the mild to moderate type, depending on what scale we use, and whose definition we go by.  This should come as no surprise to those perceptive readers who have tracked my book piles and attended to the web places I visit regularly.  Nor to those who see procrastination as a symptom of depression, or as a cause or precursor.  


My struggle with the blues is hardly remarkable for my place and time.  The most common estimates are that 20% of Americans are currently depressed.  (And the rest aren't really paying attention.)  Not yet nine years after 9/11, in the middle of a  severe economic "downturn" that has slowed our progress but not our frantic pace, and still mired in international conflict, it is little wonder that so many of us "just don't feel like it" these days--"it" ranging from parties, to work, and even to sex.  


I have been reading a lot about depression lately, because that's what I do when confronted with the circumstances of my life.  I was talking with a couple of people after church last Sunday, and sharing what I'd learned from reading about troubled offspring when my own were in situations similar to those another mother was bemoaning.  She asked why I would read about such things.  "Why would you put yourself through that?"  "Because that's how I cope," I answered.  I joked that the book piles around my bed, and work chair, and kitchen table could be "read" like tea leaves to reveal the state of my psyche in any given week.   A stack on grief.  One for depression.  Another for launching the post-secondary dyslexic learner.  


In reading about depression, I have been attempting to learn its meaning in my life, the significance of its recurrence after a stretch of years.  I have also been looking for a way out.  Because depression hurts, as anyone who has experienced it--even the squishy potato-like thingy in the Zoloft ads--can tell you.  Some of the sources I have consulted advise, rather, that the way out is into, and through the darkness.  And so I slog on.


But, even as I question the meaning of life, and the meaning of my life, more searchingly than I have for some time--returning to questions I thought I had answered--I still understand the momentary nature of our existence.  In case it matters, I want not to have "wasted" my time here.  So I am making lists, and making changes.  


It helps that I tend to agitated depression, so I can move, fueled as I am by nervous energy.  I have been buoyed by the humor and wisdom and practical guidance of Therese Borchard's blog, Beyond Blue.  (And I am happy to recommend her recently released book Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes.)  Her journey is more arduous than mine, and her courage an exemplar.   Get it Done When You're Depressed, by Julie Fast, is another useful resource.  As is Broken Open:  How Difficult Times Can Help us Grow, by Elizabeth Lesser.


But in the end (or is it the beginning?), it all comes down to doing the next good thing, day by day, until the light returns.  And remembering to marvel at the miracle of it all, even in the midst of pain. 

Day 8 and Counting...

I got up too late today.  On purpose.  The second consecutive night of sketchy sleep, interrupted by internal thermostat issues compounded by obsessive global worrying, has rendered me achy, foggy, and edgy.  In college, I could pull all-nighters with less penalty.  As a "groan-up," I have come to expect this sucked-out feeling to follow sleep struggles, and learned not to expect too much of myself on these days.

That said, yesterday's manifesto-of-a-post hangs over me this morning, and demands perseverance.

The part of me that has internalized failure in my efforts to achieve personal reform waits for me to abandon this new enterprise.  As a talisman, I hold in my mind Mary Engelbreit's iconic image of a magical Santa approaching a chimney under the banner "BELIEVE."  And I try to.

My cynical self asks what difference it makes, to me or to anyone, if I continue to blog about trying to do what I intend to do, including blogging about....  You get the picture.  My rah-rah Nike self answers that "Just Do[ing] It" is of value, in itself.  And urges me to get on with it.  And I note that having posted, and attempted to puncture, my favorite excuses has not yet robbed them of their power, not yet filled in the rut in the bed I've made and furrowed by habitual positions.  (And now my cursed internal editor is complaining about a confusion of metaphors in this last sentence, given the bed reference in the blog name and the giant tree-bed image looming over this page.  To which my poet persona replies that this could be seen as language play, and all good.)  Apparently, sleep deprivation puts one at risk for multiple personality disorder (Dissociate Identity Disorder to the DSM-IV-TR* crowd--interestingly, referred to in acronym form as DID; "split personality" to the soap opera audience).

For today, I am listening most fervently to the better angels in this cacophonous debate.  And so, whatever the merits, I will "Just [Post] It."  And live to post again.

*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:  DSM-IV-TR, published by the American Psychiatric Association.  July 2000.