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Weekly Review #19: Figuring out what works for me

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Um… Yeah. Weekly Review…

Well, it’s now this week, and although I aim to do my review of the week when it’s still kinda last week, that obviously didn’t happen this week.

Or, rather, last week.

Which is actually kind of appropriate though, given that the theme of the week has to do with figuring out what works for me.

As in, I love performing, and the Universe gave me a big ‘ol reminder of that with a killer, standing-room-only concert last Saturday.

Or, rather, the Saturday before last Saturday; last Saturday will be part of next week’s review. Or, rather, this week’s review.

Did you get that?

Reminders and validation from the Universe

In any case, not only did I get a reminder of how much I love performing, and validation that I’m kinda really good at it, but I got to do a TV interview and performance, which I took as further validation from the Universe that it’s a really, really good thing for me to keep on doing.

Plus, thanks to a day and a half of being rather disabled by a mysterious and painful sudden hip muscle inflammation, I got a swift-kick-in-the-butt reminder from the Universe not to fritter my time away and do stupid things like put music on a back burner for months on end out of money panic, like I did for most of this year ’til now. Ahem.

All in all some mighty good lessons, I must say.

Playing hooky can be good for you

Meanwhile, after a couple of months of working crazyridiculousinhuman hours to enable me to take two separate weeks away from my business to go to Jazz Camp West and California Coast Music Camp, I’ve been playing hooky a lot in rebellion. Like, to get together with friends I haven’t seen in ages, and to play my ukulele, and to, well, just sorta enjoy life a little.

Working 80-hour weeks will do that to a person.

And I’ve discovered that:

1) Lightning does not strike

2) Somehow I always still manage to get my work done

3) Life is really a helluva lot better with a little “hooky-playing”

Of course, I’m such a native of the Good Girl Planet that I’m rarely able to play hooky without at least a modicum of guilt, but I’m getting better. Exercising my Bad Girl muscles is really, really good for girls like me.

Same thing with spending a little cash on tango dancing

Yep, after several months of lying low, I went Argentine tango dancing twice this week!

I say all the time that if you want to be happy, just figure out the things that make you happy, and do them.

My regular question for everyone trudging through life is “Are you doing the things that make you happy? If not, why not?”

Alas, when I’ve asked this question of myself lately, I’ve had to admit that although dancing is one of the things I love doing most in the world, I have not been doing it.

Why not?

Partly because money’s been tight, and spending $10 or $15 to go out dancing (plus gas) means not putting that money toward bills or paying down debt.

Partly because I’ve been plagued by a foot injury on and off for over ten years, and I haven’t wanted to face the possibility that my foot is still not healed, three years after the surgery that was supposed to solve all of my problems.

Partly because I decided to spend my time working on my blog and developing my business, rather than going out dancing.

Now I’m discovering that spending a little bit of money and what-might-otherwise-be-blog-writing-and/or-business-development-time on R&R might, perhaps, be worth it every so often.

Ahem.

And, the best gift of all, so far (knock on wood), my foot seems to be doing okay!

So I think a weekly-or-so tango night is not an unreasonable request.

Which brings us to the kicker:

Maybe it’s okay not to be an overachiever all the time

Um, yeah. (Though I really hate that term, with its implications that you’re actually stupid, talentless and incompetent, and are somehow miraculously achieving things anyway. Feh.)

If you know me at all you know I have rather enormous expectations of myself. And rather enormous goals, which frequently include rather short humanly impossible timelines.

As in, my daily to-do list usually includes anywhere from 15-25 items, of which it’s really only humanly possible to complete, oh, maybe three or four, maybe five or six on a good day. And yet, instead of acknowledging that things take time, I instead usually default to beating myself up for not completing all 15-25 items.

It’s really not healthy, and yes, something I’m working on. We Palo Alto kids tend to be pretty hard on ourselves, growing up in the shadow of Stanford University as we did.

So this week (or rather, last week) was an exercise in tipping my toe in the water of “maybe it’s okay if I don’t try to accomplish everything all the time; maybe I get to chill a bit.”

Which means:

1) Maybe it’s really okay if I only post twice a week on my blog (as my original goal stated! [Yet my internal goal silently morphed into posting daily! Meh!!])

2) Maybe it’s really okay if I don’t do what all the blog gurus and ce-web-rities say you have to do (ie, post excellent content daily)

3) Maybe it’s really okay that I’m letting my other blogs languish and am just concentrating on this one

In other words:

4) Maybe it’s really okay if I figure out what works for me

Obviously, I’m still doing the figuring out part, but that’s what I’ve figured out this week.

And you?

Happiness vs. Greatness Redux

I had to hit the ground running when I got back from music camp, what with a custom ketubah waiting to be completed (photo below) in and among catching up with general business stuff.

Just completed: custom ketubah — hand-painted & hand-calligraphed — with grapevines and 24kt gilded lyre. Click for a zoom view.

Oh, and my sales tax return (still) to be done. (Yes, I know I’m a horrible procrastinator.) Running a business comes with its own built-in deadlines.

After a string of 80-hour weeks before and between music camps, however, this week has felt practically like a vacation.

Okay, that’s an extreme exaggeration, but it has been dramatically more relaxed than the rest of my summer at home. Instead of working late every night, I actually took time to have people over, meet a friend for tea, and even to have a girls’ night out in the City last night (conveniently combined with delivering the ketubah to the waiting clients, whose wedding is Monday).

All of which got me thinking about one of my favorite topics-of-obsession:

Happiness vs. Greatness

In an interview in the Unconventional Guide to Art + Money, Australian artist Hazel Dooney credits her success to her single-minded drive: “…this is my sole focus in life. This is all I dedicate my time to. I am totally undistracted by anything else, even a love life.”

In a similar way, 20+ years ago, all I really cared about was succeeding as a dancer. I can’t say that I was totally undistracted, since I definitely longed for a love life. But success — getting really, really good at this thing that I was so passionate about, and being publicly recognized for that mastery — and happiness seemed inextricably interlinked.

In fact, I remember having a certain amount of contempt for people who didn’t have such ambitions.

My parents, for example. How could they possibly be truly happy, living such… normal lives? Not making (as I saw it) some large, indelible mark on the planet?

The (younger-than-I-am-now) adults who took classes at my dance school were objects of somewhat sneering fascination and scorn to my snotty teenage self. Why were they even bothering? They’d never amount to anything as dancers, so what was the point?

If anything, they were to be pitied.

Now I’m amused and embarrassed by that teenager. I also have tremendous compassion and pity for her.

What is happiness, anyway?

Happiness, for the teenage me, was utterly dependent on a certain level of a certain type of success and recognition. I lived in a state of constant emptiness, desperately seeking to be filled by validation. No matter how hard I worked and how good I got, it was never good enough. Nor would it probably ever be.

As a result, I was quite willing to give up all sorts of normal teenage pleasures in order to pursue my dream.

There’s something quite admirable about this. Dedication, commitment, discipline can lead to amazing things.

On the other hand, I missed out on a lot. For example, although I’d been backpacking since age 6 and was an avid outdoorsperson, I quite literally ceased going camping and backpacking the year I started dancing. Heaven forbid I miss a weekend — or even a day — of dance classes!

It was a trade-off I was willing to make at the time, because I wanted so badly.

Now? The teenage me would sneer, roll her eyes and and shake her head at the present-time me. No doubt she would see me as a drop-out and dabbler.

In her eyes, I’ve become one of those adult dance students: rather pathetic.

A hard-driver goes soft (at least a little)

I remember when I noticed this change in attitude starting to happen. The year of my divorce I re-discovered dance, but in a gentler-to-my-body-and-soul form, and dove into the world of social dancing. For awhile I took private lessons from a ballroom dance teacher to learn how to follow.

Yes, I still wanted to get good at this thing I loved — that part hadn’t changed. But the desperation, and the willingness to give up everything? That part had.

I remember one lesson at a ballroom where several other private lessons and rehearsals were going on around us. One of the couples on the floor was drenched in sweat, repeating wild leaps and spins over and over again, stopping only to get notes from their coach.

It turns out they were national (or world?) youth champions, practicing for an upcoming competition.

What struck me most was that, although they were amazingly good at what they were doing, there was no joy on their faces. No bliss. And it occurred to me right then and there that I didn’t want to work that hard at anything ever again.

Oh, I’m still willing to, and do, work very, very hard. But I’d experienced dancing like that myself, in pursuit of mastery but without any real joy in what I was doing, and I never wanted to be there again.

It was that moment when I realized I’d lost some of the drive I had as a youth. Don’t get me wrong — if you’ve read anything on this blog you know that I still have plenty of drive. But what I don’t have is the willingness to give up all present-time-happiness in pursuit of some hoped-for future gratification.

All change is a loss

It’s sort of sad, in a way. I mourn that loss. Without such willingness I’ll never achieve the Greatness I’ve always longed for.

But on the other hand, I think I’m a happier person, day to day. I live more in the present than I used to. I’m much better at enjoying the moment, rather than putting so much of my energy into a hoped-for future. There’s a lovely sweetness to it.

It does mean, however, that sometimes things like writing blog posts (ahem) get left undone in favor of moment-enjoying. And if I’m totally honest I have to confess I still have conflicted feelings about this. I clearly haven’t quite achieved the zen-like state of being able to let go and feel totally okay about it.

Ah, well. There’s always something to work on.

Comments? I’d love to hear your thoughts on happiness and greatness. Is there a link there for you? Or are they totally unrelated in your world?

Never compare yourself to your heroes; look back instead

Last night, as I labored at my drafting table to calligraph an Aramaic text on a ketubah print, I distracted my aching hand by listening to a Third Tribe seminar with Sonia Simone and Johnny B. Truant.

It was a fun interview, but one part in particular really stuck with me:

The reminder not to compare yourself to your heroes.

They’re your heroes precisely because they’re ahead of you on the path. It’s easy to think they’re just superior, that you’ll never be as good/as successful/as [fill in the blank], but in fact, they were once where you stand now.

Neither, Johnny and Sonia reminded me, should you compare yourself to where you want to be. The target is constantly moving and always just out of reach. That’s the point of having goals, in fact: to push yourself forward.

It’s great to have heroes and goals, but comparing yourself to your heroes, or to where you wish you were, can only lead to feelings of failure. Not useful!

Instead, Johnny and Sonia sagely advised, compare yourself to where you used to be.

Ah, yes, infinitely more useful!

Which naturally led me to thoughts of music camp.

“This one time, at band camp…”

Okay, maybe the connection isn’t so obvious. But bear with me.

Today in yoga (when I should have had a mind empty of all thoughts except lines of energy and breath [though of course I never should on myself]), my thoughts were indeed on music camp. On Saturday I head to California Coast Music Camp (CCMC) for the week, and I’m super-excited! This afternoon, as I stretched into utthita trikonasana, I contemplated the microphone technique/performance skills workshop I want to offer to help out less experienced campers who want to perform in the student concert.

Suddenly I flashed back to my first music camp experience, in 2002: Puget Sound Guitar Workshop. I was a newbie guitar player, still struggling to get my fingers to grab the most simple of chords before the song was onto the next change. And although I knew I could carry a tune — and indeed I led services for hundreds of people at my synagogue every year at the High Holy Days — I didn’t think of myself as a singer.

How far I’ve come!

Some specific examples:

Then: I could barely play guitar.

Now: I can actually accompany myself — with jazz chords, no less — in a way that isn’t horribly embarrassing.

—

Then: I didn’t even know what music theory was.

Now: I have a decent road map of music theory (and not only that, but I’ve discovered — thanks to music camp — that I love it!)

—

Then: I could carry a tune, but didn’t have a lot of understanding of or control over my “instrument.”

Now: I can do things with my voice I never thought possible!

—

Then: I was totally in awe of the professional level performances of some of the other students.

Now: I perform professionally myself!

—

Then: The idea of having my own CD seemed fantastical.

Now: I have my own CDs!

—

Then: The idea of writing my own songs seemed totally out of reach.

Now: I’ve not only written some original songs, but other singers have asked me if they could sing them!

—

Then: I remember sitting in on the performance skills class, feeling rather overwhelmed.

Now: I’m teaching performance skills!

Benign reality and baby steps

It’s so easy to get bogged down lamenting what I haven’t achieved yet, and how far away my goals seem. Re-framing my musical life in terms of how far I’ve come turned my entire perspective around.

In 8 years I’ve gone from “Oh, I’m not a musician,” to a paid, gigging singer with a growing body of original songs, 2 self-produced CDs and a mailing list of over 500 fans.

And that’s just my musical life. I’ve made similar strides in my business, my living situation, my self-growth.

Just like a big hike through a canyon or up a mountain, progress feels slow when you’re in the middle of it, but it can take your breath away when you stop for a second and look back at how far you’ve traveled.

All of this gives me hope and a renewed sense of commitment and energy. The race is not always to the swift. Baby step by baby step I’m moving myself forward.

I wonder where I’ll be in another 8 years?

Staying out of pooping range

The bird poop and feathers on my windshield are a clear indication that the doves have taken up their summer residence again, building their nest in the rafters of the carport.

Right above my car.

Very convenient for them. Not so much for me.

I already needed a car wash (one more thing that has been sorely neglected while I spin around the hamster wheel that is my current work life; I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve now got one of those cars that begs passersby to write “wash me!” with their finger in the dust). Now I really need a car wash.

And I also need to remember for the next few weeks to pull my car right up to the wall by the passenger side of the carport. If I squeeze in tight enough, the poop mostly falls just to the left of the driver side door.

It’s honestly pretty darn annoying.

Just being doves

Back before he was my ex-boyfriend, when the doves last took up residence, my ex-boyfriend offered to get rid of the nest for me. I’ll admit I was tempted, but I couldn’t quite authorize the pulling of that trigger.

The fact is, I’m grateful that I live in a part of the world where there are doves. And squirrels, and songbirds, and other wild things.

And the doves are just being doves. Endangering little baby doves (or incipient ones) for the sake of having a clean car just didn’t feel right.

My species came along generations ago and cut down whatever forests were growing here to build orchards, and later roads and townhouses, homes and schools and apartment buildings. The doves have done a pretty good job of adapting to the situation: no cat is going to be able to get at the nest up in the rafters.

One of these years maybe I’ll get around to putting up some kind of nest-building deterrent before the summer residence starts. But for now, I’ll just let sleeping doves lie.

Besides, my car will be well out of pooping range all of next week while I’m making music in the woods at CCMC. Maybe the chicks will be out of the nest by the time I get back.

And if not, maybe it’s the Universe’s roundabout way of telling me I need to get my car washed more frequently.

A former bulimic looks back to focus forward

Whenever I teach beginning calligraphy students, I tell them to keep their practice sheets, write the date on them and tuck them away in a drawer. Then down the road, when the frustrated novice calligraphers are convinced (as they inevitably will be) that their skills are going backwards, they can pull out those early attempts and see just how far they’ve come.

Usually they’re in for a pleasant surprise.

I keep a journal (admittedly intermittent, but still) partly for the same reason — so I can remember where I used to be and to mark my progress.

Going to Jazz Camp West and CCMC every year (except last year — long story, and big mistake) serves as a great marker for my singing and guitar skills. “Wow! A year ago I couldn’t do that! Hey, I have my own original songs now! I have a CD! Remember when that was just a dream?”

Looking back to focus forward

Whenever times are especially tough, it’s a good idea to pause and look back. Usually, when I can sit “outside the distress,” as it were, I can see that things are actually on an upswing overall. Even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

This past week has been kinda rough. Systems breakdown + impending deadlines = no time to work toward any Big Goals, no time to make art or music, no time do My Important Work or to do much of anything except tread water.

How is this progressing toward the life I really, really want?

Then, deep breath. Poke head up above the clouds and look back.

Confessions of a former bulimic

People would never guess this about me, but not so long ago I was caught up in an addictive behavior pattern that is as tough to deal with as any substance abuse. The “substance” was food (something we’re all technically addicted to, if you think about it), but food was not really the issue.

Still, it ruled my life. I would wake up every morning and plan, to the calorie, what I was going to eat that day. Starvation rations, usually.

Inevitably, I would “blow it,” then binge. Frequently until I was so stuffed I could barely move. Then I would purge, which is a polite way of saying I would force myself to throw up into the toilet. For a time I ate ex-lax like candy, too.

Some days were better, some worse. On a really bad day the cycle might repeat a few times. I think six might have been the record. On a good day I might make it through the day without falling prey to the cycle, but my thoughts always revolved around food, my weight, my body.

My body image was so distorted that at 5′ 8″ and 120-130-some-odd pounds, I felt “obese.” I was a modern and ballet dancer during most of the time I struggled with this eating disorder, and what’s “normal” and “beautiful” in the “regular world” is unacceptably “fat” in the dance world.

But the seeds of my illness were sown long before I started dancing at age 16. My family had a “scarcity” attitude towards food (when those brownies are gone, there are never going to be any more!), and my beautiful, image-conscious mom was always trying to lose “that last 5 pounds.” But I was facing forces much more powerful than my family.

Let’s face it: females growing up in the US (or any Western culture) are heavily programmed to believe that these false statements are god’s truth:

1) beauty is a girl’s/woman’s most important asset

2) being thin is essential to being beautiful

Look at any magazine aimed at women. Turn on any television program.

I hate to admit it, but I bought this message, hook, line and sinker. It wasn’t until I had my “radical Feminist awakening” in college at age 20 that I started questioning this idea, and understanding the concept of “the personal is political.”

Imagine if the time, money and energy women spend obsessing over body image and looks were suddenly liberated to do other things! What might we accomplish!

Slow and steady healing

It took me years to heal from my disorder. My radical Feminist awakening in college was the start. Not being in front of a mirror in a leotard and tights for hours every day helped too, as did meeting a man who believed — and convinced me — that I was beautiful just as I was. (One of the many gifts from my ex-husband.)

Improvement was slow, and there were plenty of set-backs. For years I believed “once a bulimic, always a bulimic.”

But you know what? Today I don’t think that has to be true. I’ll admit I still have “fat attacks” once or twice a year, when I start spiraling into a bit of a panic, and eat to feed something that isn’t physical hunger. I’ve gone through this cycle enough now, though, to know that it will wear itself out, and I’ll reach equilibrium again.

The amazing thing is that today, not only do I have a better relationship with my body than I did 20 years ago (when my body was more “ideal” according to cultural expectations of female beauty!), but I have a healthier relationship with food than just about any woman I know.

That is a miracle I never thought I’d see.

Anything is possible

So today, at the end of a challenging week, when my goal of creating the life I really, really want feels out of reach, I’m reminding myself of the miracles I’ve accomplished already in my life. If I can beat bulimia, and emerge a stronger, healthier person, I can achieve just about anything.

Baby steps. One step at a time.

It may not feel like I’m getting anywhere, but I’m keeping my notes and practice sheets to pull out down the road so I can see how far I’ve come.

Onward!

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