Done for the Week: Up the River

Another crazy busy week.  And the coming one promises to be worse.  Lots of stuff seems to be getting done; not much of it particularly well planned.  Planning takes a bit more time and energy than seems to be available to me just now.

At any rate, here's the list.


Done for the Week:  Mar. 12-18, 2012

1. Swam once with my workout partner; canoed once
2. Worked with physical therapist twice to restore injured foot
3. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Place of Hiding aloud with my husband
4. Read The Black Cat, by Martha Grimes; Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen
5. Continued reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past
6. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
7. Published 4 Put it to Bed blog posts
8. Continued to participate more in the BlogHer community
9. Continued work on current clients' projects
10. Resumed work on previous client's large project
11. Attended two yoga classes
12. Did laundry
13. Continued college conversations with youngest son
14. Meditated 2 times
15. Straightened my work room
16. Attended Board meeting
17. Attended Issues Night meeting; joined new voter id task force
18. Traveled to Minneapolis with my husband and one son, to visit with my stepdaughter and her family
19. Met my newest step-grandson
20. Experienced a "wild ride" adventurous late evening canoe trip down the St. Croix River
21. Celebrated St. Patrick's Day Eve Happy Hour with my husband
22. Spent extra time babysitting my sick grandson
23. Took my dog to the dog park

The most important thing I did last week was traveling with my husband and son to visit my stepdaughter and her family, including their new baby.  

I have often commented that my "blended" family is more like something out of a Cuisinart gone wrong.  At this late date in my second--and last--marriage, I wish to provide all of us with as many pleasant experiences as possible.  And although this one required sitting in a car for more than 16 hours, among other inconveniences, it was completely worth it.  Wedging a seven-mile canoe trip, between river banks dotted with snow, against the wind and the dwindling light, sandwiched into a 2-1/2 hours round trip by car from their house, was totally over the top--and again, well worth it.  A high point was rowing past an island whose trees were filled with blue heron nests, and watching the beautiful awkward birds take flight.

We also took the scenic route home from Minneapolis, driving along the banks of the Mississippi.  The riverfront vistas of  bluffs and locks and aspen filled our eyes and souls with unaccustomed wonder.

Back in the everyday world, last week's focus goal was "to continue the effort to meditate regularly and to write every day for the remainder of March."

As in previous weeks, I continue to have difficulty pulling this one off.  According to all the magazine articles I peruse while on a stationary bike or at my physical therapist's office, all the books I'm slogging through, and all the blogs I consult, it should be a simple matter to effect these habit changes.  All I have to do is implement the programs dictated by the "new science of the brain," and voila!  I should be meditating and writing up a storm, as desired.

But as with my governor's job creation approach, "it's not working."   However, I'm not being recalled--at least not yet--and so I have some time to get it right. 

Next week:  same focus goal, same resolve in the face of anticipated same uncooperative circumstances.  I plan to tweak, and tweak some more.

A Blogging Handoff

Today got away from me.  Too many appointments, meetings and work commitments.  One too many naps in the sun.  Not nearly enough meals.

So tonight, instead of cranking out some drivel to fill this space, I'm going to direct my Put it to Bed readers to this excellent post on the subject of procrastination, "Why Procrastination Is Good for You: 5 Ways to Make it Work", by Lisa Earl McLeod.

And here's why.  Because:

• It's way better than anything I'm going to write tonight.  Trust me.
• It takes a position pretty much the opposite of what the experts tell us to do about procrastination, which appeals to my inner Che.
• I find myself knee-deep in great posts to read, and bowing out on this occasion will make more reading time available for an existing post that deserves attention.  (If my seven regular readers all follow this bread crumb to the post in question.)
• Of some other reasons I'm too tired to articulate adequately.

Thank you Lisa Earl McLeod, for providing this fortunate "out" for a played out blogger.

Dr. Mom, Nurse Nana, and Undoing My To-Do List

As a mother for thirty-four years, and a grandmother for four, you'd think I would have figured this out by now.

Kids get sick!  And then the other kids get sick!  And then I get sick!

I'm sick of this!

One of the most frequent interruptions to work I have tried to do, and a life I have tried to make, has been the illnesses of children.  Acute and chronic.  Slight and more serious.  Physical and mental.  And quite often, some combination of these, and affecting more than one child at a time.  And always requiring some alteration of my routine, either minor or grand.

I accept that providing the care and nurturance needed to support these children who depend on me in their return to health and functioning is my responsibility.  Not my responsibility alone, but one that has fallen mainly to me, if for no other reason than that I am capable of fulfilling it.  Exceptionally capable.

At present, my household includes one minor (in his late teens), and one young adult, in addition to a spouse who is by nature helpless when it comes to dealing with his own incapacitations, let alone those of others.  Additionally, I provide part-time childcare for my daughter's four-year-old and five-month-old.  I am no longer chiefly responsible for any of these individuals.  But their illnesses still throw a wrench in my works, as they have done this week--what with the extra trips for Pediacare, and for prescriptions and sick food; the extra hours spent sitting on the floor with a barfy preschooler; the worrying and advising as my asthmatic, acutely ill, and recently employed son learns to work while sick.  The chicken soup.

But here's the thing.  Not only is it inherently stressful to deal with sick people, and particularly small sick people.  There's all that regression, the whining and screaming and demandingness.  And there's the barfing, the uncovered sneezing, the shiny green snot on the upper lips.  The hacking cough that hurts to hear.  And the loss of sleep, the twenty-four-sevenness of the whole thing.  But added to all this are the demands of work that are incompatible with this job of home nursing.  Demands that don't go away, just because we are not in a position to respond to them. 

In our society, we don't arrange our work lives to accommodate illness, though it is pretty much a given that it will occur.  And it is generally women who pay the price of this lack of "intelligent design."  For some of us who are employed outside the home, it is an issue of paid, or unpaid sick leave.  Some workers cannot take time off, period, to deal with illness.  Others must sacrifice income to do so.

In my community, we recently passed a paid sick leave ordinance, which was subsequently stopped by an injunction; then the injunction was overturned on appeal; then the governor signed into law a bill blocking the ordinance.  The ordinance would have required that employers allow workers to earn paid sick leave, which could be used for their own or family members' illnesses.  It would have been a major benefit to low income women and their children.  Other communities have passed measures mandating paid sick leave, and still others have attempted to do so.  The National Partnership for Women and Families is working to establish support for national legislation providing for paid sick leave.

It will never be fun or easy to take care of sick children.  Or to be sick ourselves.  But we shouldn't be punished for stepping up to the task.

In addition to the paid sick leave issue, there is the societal more that work must come first.  No excuses.  This expectation is increasingly problematic as work creeps into our homes, and beyond its workday boundaries, with email, texts and smartphones expanding our accessibility.  It is difficult to contend with the feelings of guilt and resentment engendered by these requirements while simultaneously carrying barf buckets, washing extra laundry, administering medicines, visiting doctors, taking temperatures, and providing TLC.

In this environment, it is a radical act--one that I am trying to educate myself to perform--to let oneself off the hook.  So this week, I intend to let go the work that interferes with what I need to do for the sick people in my family.  And I will not push said work into the time I need for rest, so that I don't get sick.  'Cuz God knows, no one has time to take care of me!

Procrastinating 101: Just Start, to Finish

Okay.  It's Tuesday.  I don't know about you, but I'm still a procrastinator, in some form or another.  So it's time, once again, for Procrastinating 101--our (mostly) weekly survey class-type discussion of the findings and writings of experts in the field.

At present, we are making our way through Dr. Timothy Pychyl's blessedly boiled-down treatment, The Procrastinator's Digest:  A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.  We are up to Chapter 6:  "The Power of Getting Started."

And the mantra for this chapter?  "Just get started."

So, let's begin.  

Pychyl tells us that "getting started changes our perceptions of a task," according to research he has conducted.  Specifically, once we have gotten our feet wet with respect to a dreaded task, we see that task as significantly less unpleasant, onerous, daunting, etc.  And we feel differently about ourselves, too, once we get started--"more in control and more optimistic."  So if we

'prime the pump' by making some progress on our goals, the resulting increase in our subjective well-being enhances further action and progress.

(And now that I am a few paragraphs into writing this post that I couldn't get to earlier today--thanks to a barfing grandson, a moody spouse, and the usual unanticipated work obligations and other interruptions--I feel more positive than when I began.  The post seems more "writeable" and I feel more capable of finishing it.  Dr. Pychyl and his academic crew seem to have gotten this one right.)

At this point, Dr. Pychyl returns to his advice, set out more generally earlier in the book, that we use the device of an implementation intention as a cornerstone of our strategy for change.   This time around, he provides a bit more detail:

As defined in the well-developed psychology of action created by Peter Gollwitzer (University of New York) [mentioned in an earlier post drawing on the book Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath], an implementation intention supports a goal intention by setting out in advance when, where and how we will achieve this goal (or at least a sub-goal within the larger goal or task).

 An implementation intention that aims to interrupt our procrastinating behavior pattern could look like this:

IF I say to myself things like, "I'll feel more like doing this later" or "I don't feel like doing this now," THEN I will just get started on some aspect of the task.

Pychyl cautions us against going all Nike--"Just do it!"--lest we get overwhelmed.  We are "pre-deciding" only to start, after which "the 'doing it' will take care of itself."

I was particularly taken with Dr. Pychyl's reference to meditation as an example of something that takes continual "re-starting," as we return our wandering attention to the breath.  He uses this as an analogy for the process of starting on a task, not just once, but again and again throughout the day.

He goes on to provide research-based advice that we need to think concretely about a project, and to begin with a small, tangible action.  For example, we might begin a writing task by typing a title, or assembling references.  I might begin a blog by finding an image, or choosing labels.  

Tucked ever-so-subtly under this positive section describing writing, sculpting, farming, and carpentry as beginning with  "roughing" in, is this bit of "tough love" from the man whose students have dubbed him "Dr. Procrastination:"

Honestly, if you are not ready to make this first step, to just get started, on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, then put this book down now.  You are not committed to change yet, and nothing else I have to say will matter in your self-change.  Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to discourage you.  I am just being honest.

If we are still hanging in after that "talking-to," Dr. Pychyl directs us to begin concretizing a project on which we have been procrastinating, using the following table:

Goal or Task
Priority or Order of Completion	List of Sub-tasks

   


And now that I've reached the end of this post, please excuse me while I proceed to fill in the cells with every trivial thing I can think of which might move me closer to the completion of my novel.  Of course, sharpening pencils is not only the most tired of cliches, but also anachronistic.  But what about cutting out pictures for a story board?  Or replacing the lamp in my work room?  Or . . . .