Growing Up Chaotic

Looking back through the "annals" of my year old blog, I observe a certain preoccupation with the question of routine.  Alternatively, I long for routine; loathe it; seek it; undermine it; break it; escape from it; and construct and reconstruct it.  But routine is almost never a neutral force in my life.  It is not familiar enough for that.

When I was visiting with one of my sisters recently, we discussed our familial problems with routine.  Neither of us was certain why we were raised with so little of the kind of scaffolding that can support day-to-day effort.  But, for whatever reason, both of us grew into seat-of-our-pants, fly-by-night moms, and workers, and housekeepers, and friends.  We meet the most ordinary recurring tasks fresh each time, as if caught by surprise that bills need to be paid again, groceries shopped for, meals prepared, kitchens cleaned, laundry done, jobs reported to, projects accomplished, holidays celebrated, etc., etc.

Psychologists might look to circumstances of our family of origin to explain this missing limb.  Our father was a grossly overworked and overworking physician, who struggled with depression for as far back as I can remember.  Our mother's lively intelligence was subsumed in the challenge of raising five children, and pretty much single-handedly keeping the home fires smoldering.  There is an abundant literature about what kinds of adults emerge from parenting by alcoholics, depressives, and others whose painful realities limit their availability for functional parenting. 

My siblings and I could certainly have turned out worse.  We are more or less "intact" and relatively "normal," whatever that means.  We have our parents' love and hard work to thank for that, at least partially, if not their happy natures.

But none of us has a particularly easy time organizing our days, or our lives.  We do have a whole identity as creative free spirits, a point of pride that may compensate somewhat for the energy we waste in reinventing "solutions" to commonplace problems.

Some days, though, I'd trade this sense of ersatz superiority for a mindless trance that would lead me through my to-do list, and a certainty born of "the way we've always done it."

Piling Up Treasure--by Proxy

I have found sometimes that whatever is going on in my life, or in my head, seems to need working out in some oblique way.  Some stand-in activity that exercises muscles that need strengthening, rehearses story lines I need to learn.

Like times when I've been especially stumped by some dilemma, and have spent endless hours bent over a jigsaw puzzle, past the point of sleep and oblivious to shooting pains in my back.  In such circumstances, I was held to the spot and to the pursuit of a completed picture.

Or when I have felt bested by life, and been compelled to countless games of solitaire, needing a win more than anything.

Or days when whirlwind cleaning spells have come over me, when order and spotlessness are everything, and I scrub and dust and rearrange until I drop.

The last few days, I have found myself farming glass.  

Almost two years ago, a high wind took our glass patio table over, and a translucent plane that had held place settings for eight became zillions of tiny glinting shards.  When it happened, the weather was already turning cold, and life was busy, and the snow fell before I had made much of a dent in harvesting the dangerous crop that dusted a wide section of my backyard.  

Last summer, I made a few desultory efforts to tackle the disaster area, but lost focus, and the crazy hope that I could really reclaim my ground.

But this week, the action of combing (literally--with an actual comb!) the dirt and filling my hand, and then a large paper bag with dozens, and by now hundreds of pieces of glass, many of them near-perfect 1/8" cubes, has become an absorption that calls me outside for hours each day.  I recognize the aching back and leg muscles, and the resistance to stopping, from my earlier experiences of this kind of externalized spiritual quest.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm seeking, but I know I need to keep at it--and that I'll know when I'm done.  Right now, nothing holds as much satisfaction as spotting a shiny surface peeking out from the soil, freeing it, and adding it to my growing pile.

Today, I guess this is what procrastination looks like.

Procrastinating 101: What Am I, Nuts?

The penultimate chapter in Joseph Ferrari's book Still Procrastinating?  The No-Regrets Guide to Getting it Done is entitled "Procrastination and Personality Styles."  Given its content, a more apt title might have been "Procrastination and Comorbidity."

I was first exposed to this oh-so-charming term as the mother of a dyslexic learner, when I was made aware that individuals whose learning style is not text-friendly have a "high incidence" of comorbidity with other alphabetically named "dis"orders, such as ADD or ADHD, and with depression--especially if they, like my son, are "twice exceptional," meaning that they are "gifted" and "LD" ("learning disabled").  

In Chapter 12, Dr. Ferrari focuses on overlaps between procrastination and "some major yet common clinical disorders," such as impulsivity, self-handicapping, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADD/ADHD. He begins by informing us that

Many clinical psychologists and professionals in the helping occupations consider chronic, frequent procrastination to be a major symptom of many psychiatric disorders.

He goes on to report the findings of research conducted by himself and colleagues of his in an effort to tease out the relationships between procrastinating and these afflictions.  Among these findings:

• The more that people reported that they procrastinated, the more they also claimed to possess dysfunctional impulsivity.

  This seems to be partly an effect of poor planning--overestimating the time remaining to complete a task, referred to in the literature as the planning fallacy.  As the deadline approaches, the procrastinator behaves impulsively--at the last minute.

• [P]rocrastination is related to a number of self-defeating behaviors, namely, choosing disappointment in life, rejecting the help of others when it's needed, feeling guilty after unexpected positive events occur, rejecting participation in pleasurable situations, criticizing others and circumstances when failure occurs, rejecting others when positive events happen, and excessive self-sacrificing for others.

• Compulsions, but not obsessions, are related to procrastination.

• The link does exist between attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and frequent, chronic procrastination.  . . . [but] only for people diagnosed with ADHD.  . . . [W]ith a larger sample of men and women drawn from individuals who were not formally diagnosed with ADHD, no relationship seems to exist between procrastination and attention deficit.

Ferrari sensibly concludes, however, that

Whether your procrastination is a coping mechanism that you learned, or you have been clinically diagnosed with a disorder and procrastinating accompanies this problem, sometimes a simple solution will work in both cases.

For example, his elucidation of helpful strategies for individuals with ADHD who experience difficulty with transitions from one situation to another is detailed and practical.

In general, I am not enamored of the approach that tends to pathologize procrastination, particularly when so many of us seem to "suffer" from this so-called malady.  It seems to me that any life condition that results in stress and overload might produce the troublesome behavior of putting off things that we are supposed to be doing.  Might those diagnosed with cancer be prone to procrastinating?  What about people with chronic fatigue syndrome?  Parents of multiples?  People living below the poverty level?

While postponement may be "dysfunctional," in terms of conforming to requirements, it may also help us to survive overwhelming circumstances.  Which is not to say that procrastination is to be encouraged, but more that its management may be supported by a compassionate understanding of its usefulness, at times.

Done for the Past Two Weeks: A Break in My Time/Space Continuum

I have not taken so much time off from blogging since beginning Put it to Bed on the last day of 2009.   

I had read about blogging fatigue before I began to experience it sometime this spring.  For me, I think it is exacerbated by an approach to blogging which is in conflict with some core beliefs I hold about life and its rhythms.  

I have been attempting, for the last sixteen months, to follow the lead of bloggers I read and enjoy, who seem never to take time off.  As a reader, I grow concerned if their posts are not up by the usual time, or when, God forbid, they miss a day!  Did she fall under a bus?  Were her children hospitalized?  Is he experiencing insurmountable technical difficulties? 

I think I have harbored a secret fear that if I didn't go all out as a blogger, I wouldn't maintain this new activity and the identity that goes with it.  I would no longer be a serious blogger.  And let's face it, someone writing about "putting things to bed," and all things procrastinational clearly has a few issues with sustaining effort.

But in the wake of my first whole week off, preceded by two three-posts-only weeks, I am in the process of reconsidering my personal blogging rules.  In the meantime, here's the list of what I got done during this period of relative blog drought:

Done for the Last Two Weeks:  April 18-May 1

1. Continued off-season race training; completed Weeks 8 and 9 of C2K--six training sessions
2. Ran once with my new training partner, back from her vacation
3. Resumed swimming 
4. Finished Happenstance:  Two Novels in One About a Marriage in Transition, by Carol Shields; Finger Lickin' Fifteen, by Janet Evanovich; Lake News, by Barbara Delinsky
5. Continued significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
6. Attended a celebration of the completed effort to file enough signatures to trigger recall of my state senator
7. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
8. Published 4 blog posts
9. Saw The King's Speech with my husband
10. Took a one-week blog vacation 
11. Finally arranged and took trip to New Orleans with one son, to visit with my Mom, my sister and her family
12. Got my Mom's cell phone activated
13. Had my first long-distance cell phone conversation with my Mom
14. Saw Arthur with my Mom and sister
15. Meditated 7 times
16. Got one son and husband to the gym with me once each
17. Attended 1 yoga class
18. Had dinner date with my husband
19. Cooked for my Louisiana family
20. Shopped for groceries
21. Caught up on laundry
22. Watched two heartbreaking basketball games, and followed an overtime victory online
23. Colored Easter eggs with my three children and one grandson
24. Completed 5K Brownie Shuffle, walking with my daughter
25. Met with website client 
26. Planted hydrangea
27. Spent two hours picking up glass shards remaining in our yard from a glass table shattered in a windstorm 
28. Skipped four scheduled events
29. Watched two Treme episodes with my husband

My focus goal for the week of April 18 to 24 was to complete Week 8 of the Couch Potato to 5K training program, with the three required sessions spread more evenly over the week.  


I succeeded in meeting this goal, and went on to complete Week 9 while on "vacation" in Louisiana.  For this week, I will focus on transitioning to triathlon training, in preparation for the Danskin Triathlon on August 21.  My training schedule will need to accommodate my increasingly busy work and volunteer commitments, a more balanced attention to family, home and self-care, and my training partner's hours--a logistical feat in itself.

The most important thing I got done over the last two weeks was finally managing to get myself and one son to New Orleans to see my Mom and my sister.  As she reminded herself and my, my mother is eighty-three years old.  Having lost my father, I think of the opportunity to visit with my Mom as a limited-time offer.  I am grateful to have a spouse who encourages me to spend the time and the money necessary to travel to see her with some frequency. 

A week of glorious and unexpectedly less-than-blistering temperatures, with time to read and chat and walk and eat and work jigsaw puzzles and remenisce and eat, was lagniappe--in New Orleans parlance,

a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase (such as a 13th donut when buying a dozen), or more broadly, "something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure."