Sand and Stone

"Sand & Stone"

Two friends were walking through the desert. At one point, they had an argument; and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:

"today my best friend slapped me in the face. "

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:

"today my best friend saved my life'

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, 'after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?'

The friend replied 'when someone hurts us, let us write it down in sand, where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, let us engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.'

This is a forward I got, and it has probably been around multiple times, but I thought it might be relevant to our discussion and shed light on attitudes about forgiveness.

(Photo by me [mary taitt].)

{I have to say that the gap between what I believe and my success at practicing it is very wide.}

Forgiving ourselves and others is a large part of the twelve steps!!!!!

My Wheel of Life (and "Fortune")

A. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of Health
and Fitness? 6

If Health and Fitness were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. __I would weight 130 pounds (or a lot less than I do now!) and
no longer need a CPAP machine (no obesity or sleep apnea)__

2. __I would sleep well (no insomnia)__

3. __My brain tumor would shrink and disappear__

B. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of Personal Gorwth? 7

If Personal Growth were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. __I would be deeply satisfied with who I am and be kind to
myself and others_

2. _I would have a satisfying spiritual practice_

3. _I would be a shamanistic dreamer who meditated, LOL and have a
GREAT sense of humor!_

C. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of physical
environment? 5

If my physical environamnet were a 10 for me, what three things would
be happening?

1. _my house would be clean, neat, tidy and well-organized_

2. _I would live with closer access to nature__

3. __I would be doing more for the environment_

D. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of work/career? 7.5

If work/career were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. _I would be focussing on one project at a time and bringing it
to fruition_

2. _I would be sending out Frog Haven__

3. _I would be writing Geraldine poems_

E. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of money? 8

If money were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. __I would have office space to work__

2. __I would have studio space to work__

3. __I would have retirement etc all worked out and school for the kid etc_

F. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of Love and Romance? 9

If Love and Romance were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. _Hiking Companion and I could talk better with each other_

2. _Hiking Companion wouldn't have to wrk 58-hour weeks_

3. _HC and I would have sex a little more often_

G. On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of Family and Friends? 7

If Family and Friends were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. _I would see my family and friends in NY more often_

2. __I would make new friends here_

3. __I would like 3 good friends besides HC and time to have time with them_

On a scale of 0 - 10, how fulfilled am I in the area of Fun and Recreation? 8.5

H. If Fun and Recreation were a 10 for me, what three things would be happening?

1. __I would spend more time in nature_

2. __I would do more interesting things; walk in different places_

3. _I would invent a middle of the week simple fun event_

I like this exercise because it gives a nice overview of strengths and weaknesses in the balance of my life. There were a few things I didn't know where to put--mental/emotional health--does that go under health and fitness? Does spiritual growth go under personal growth? Does mental and emotional well-being crossover between health and fitness and personal growth?

I'd like to spend more time thinking about this, but when I spend too
much time blogging, I feel as if I am slighting other things that I
need to do.

This is a WINGS challenge, but I am afraid to try to link it--last time I did that the whole post collapsed and it took me 45 minutes to fix it. Maybe I will try tomorrow, because there are also some things about the post I'd like to fix.

This exercise generates a list--a sort of to-do list based on eliminating dissatisfactions and problems. I would like to compare that list to one generated the normal way. That would be interesting. It has the advantage of being fairly balanced.

Click image to view larger!

Note: This is a wonderful addition to my STEP 4! YAY!

Wings Challenge 11 and 12

For details on challenge #11 see here

If personal growth were a 10, I would be more satisfied with all the other categories. For the most part, though, I feel like I am doing everything I can to improve this category, and feel that I am growing personally because of it, even if it's not as fast as I would like.

If physical environment were a 10, I'd be living in the Caribbean, or someplace like it with blue water. Anything has got to be better than the muddy brown water here, but I can't complain. I have a roof over my head, and a bed to sleep in.

If career were a 10, I'd be able to support myself. Otherwise, I really like what I do.

If money were a 10, I'd be able to support myself, afford recreation, and be able to save for retirement.

If romance were a 10, I'd have a mate that was patient, understanding, and cared like my husband did. I'm not too worried about that right now, though.

If friends/family were a 10, I'd be able to communicate with my family, and I'd have a real social life like my virtual cyber social life. I'm really happy with the friends I've been making blogging, though.

If recreation were a 10, I'd be scuba diving, walking on a beach, doing fun things with friends, like camping, swimming, etc. Again, I really can't complain, because I have plenty of extra time to do my art, and make occasional trips to the arboretum.

If health and fitness were a 10, I'd be healthy and happy. I work really hard at this, and for the most part, do everything I'm supposed to do, but you wouldn't know it, thanks to my depression and physical illness.

Somehow, I'm supposed to get some short term goals out of this to put on my to-do list, which is the next challenge. As far as I can see, I need to just keep doing what I've been doing, working on personal growth, spiritually for health, and therapeutically for family and career, so I'll have more money, and can afford recreation and a new environment [maybe it will help me to spell that word correctly before posting my picture, too].

How do you to-do?


Challenge 12 asks these questions: [for more info click here]

Do you create a series of lists for long and short terms goals and tasks?
What kinds of things do you schedule?
How do you prioritize?
Do you schedule fun things that are just for you?
How do you keep your list - on a calendar, on your computer, in folders?
What do you do with the items you don't get done?

While I've been faithfully journaling for a year now, I just don't do to-do lists. They overwhelm me, so I just keep them in my head, where they still overwhelm me, but I can ignore them. After reading Carla's post on this subject, I decided that I probably should come up with a better method. My research on this involved asking my sister how she does it. She has an electronic planner where she keeps one work related to-do list, and one personal. Her goal is to do three things on the work list a day based on priority, and three things on the personal list each weekend. At the end of the day, she deletes the ones she accomplished, moves priority to the top of the list, and then moves the entire list to the next day. She says that even if there are more than three priority items to be done, which is usually the case with her job, she still keeps her goal at three. If she does more great. If not, the world won't end. She's very successful at her career, and the people she works for, love her. She puts fun things on her calender, but I don't think they go on her to-do list. Because she's in management, her long term goals are written up on regular reports, so her list consists of mainly short term goals. I think I'll try her 3 goal rule, and see if I don't have a better attitude about my to-do lists.

Assigning value, Intrinsic Value

Assigning value, Intrinsic Value
Wings Challenge part II

How does one value the activities one engages in?  How do you value them so that you can make choices?  I keep telling myself, "First things First," but . . .  what are those first things?  How do you achieve an appropriate balance between work, obligations (family, community, environment), play, rest sleep, eating etc?

For example, I wanted to clarify something I said in the last post.  I said that for me, art is play.  I am not a professional artist, so when I do art, I do it for fun.  I like it so much that I have a tendency to do it when I should be doing other things--like my work, my family obligations etc.  I'm 62 years old now, and I STILL feel confused about prioritizing my activities.  How can I make a to-do list and prioritize it when I'm not sure how to do that?

I usually make daily lists.  I wonder if weekly lists would be better and less intimidating, or actually MORE intimidating, since there would be more on it.


In my fantasy about myself, say five-ten years in the future, I would like to be healthy, vigorous and ORGANIZED!  (In a balanced way).  I'd make subgoals for it if I knew how.

I think being organized in a reasonable way has intrinsic value.  If one isn't organized at least to some extent, one cannot function.  One can't find things.  One doesn't really know what to do next.  So I assign a theoretical high value to it, but I have never made it a priority to learn HOW to do it.  To actually MAKE it the priority it deserves to be.  In areasonable and balanced way.  I don't want to be one of those neat freaks.

I would like my house to look like a relaxed, backwoods version of Better Homes and Gardens.  Ha ha.  By this, I mean neat, clean and appealing.  Welcoming.

But I need to streamline the process of getting it that way and keeping it that way so I can do my work, sleep, eat, and social relationships, etc.  I wonder if that's even possible given the constraints within which I exist.  (I feel discouraged about it).

To-do: one thing to make me feel less discouraged.  Hmm.  I wonder what that would be and when I would do it.  Not while blogging about it.

A Big To-do about To-dos

A Big To-do about To-dos
A Wings Challenge

It is interesting how these Wings Challenges seem to come just when I need them,  I am not sure this one is going to give me any answers, maybe just questions to look at.

I just had a big birthday.  All birthdays are big, in a sense.  But this one seems somehow bigger.  I am now officially, in this area anyway, a senior citizen and a crone.  I am 62.  I get discounts now, and I get constipated.  I get fat easily and don't have as much energy as I use to.  I'm a lot more forgetful and more disorganized.  I didn't want to look 20 years ahead in case I might be dead or dying.  My parents both died at 83 and weren't doing to well at 82!  I want to be different.  I want to live longer than that.  But there is no guarantee that I will with my genetic time bombs ticking.  I have a brain tumor, a meningioma, same one that essentially killed my Mom.

Does any of that have anything to do with my to-do lists and priorities?  You bet.

First on my to-do list?  Take good care of myself.

First to be ignored?  Exactly that, way too often.

I get tired, I get stressed, I do stupid things.  Unwise things.

So, how do I organize my priorities?  Very poorly, but I keep trying!  Maybe I should mention that I also have ADHD!  AK!

I have tried many systems and read many books on "getting organized" and have tried over and over and always failed.  (A fourth step note:  I am very disorganised!)

Here are some of the things I've tried:

• notebooks of lists.  Sometimes, this works well, until I lose it in a heap of $#|^!  (otherwise know as piles of unsorted stuff or archaeological dig sites.)  I've tried both loose leaf and spiral notebooks to keep lists in.  Each has its advantages.
• I keep lists on my computer
• I keep lists on-line
• I keep lists at my yahoo calendar
• I keep lists in my journal
• I keep lists in my PDA
• I write notes to myself on scraps of paper and promptly lose them,or some of them.
• I keep lists in my head.  This works very poorly as I promptly forget anything but the most appealing items.
• I sometimes make lists for my husband and son--they aren't very task oriented sometimes.  But it's not up to me to take their inventory.  But things need to be done.  Sigh.
  

OK, like I said, I have no answers, only questions.  Like HELP!  How can I do it better and make it work?

At New Year's and at my birthday and randomly throughout the year, I like to look at how I am progressing toward my goals.  Usually not very well, but I've always made some progress.  Then I reevaluate my goals, set new subgoals and priorities, and march forward.  And promptly get distracted by a variety of mew projects or old projects newly surfacing and rearing their tempting heads.  For example, I have multiple books in progress, poetry books, novels, children's novels, children's picture books.  One goal is to complete each of these in turn and send them off to publishers.  Another goal is to unpack from my not-so recent move.  I try to alternate between these tasks, as otherwise I would only play (eg: do art).  So I was unpacking a box from my move and found an old manuscript.  We were just leaving on vacation and I spent my spare vacation time writing new chapters to this old manuscript rather than working on one of my nearly finished works.

OK, I am not finding any solutions here.

Here are (some of) my goals: 

1. to be as healthy as possible and take the best possible care of myself
2. to take good care of my mind if possible (my mother had dementia)
3. to be a loving partner and mother and friend
4. to finish my novels, poetry manuscripts and other projects in an orderly way and send them out
5. to create a sense of order and a pleasing environment for myself and my family (that will never happen at the rate I'm going!)

 There are (some of the) subgoals to each of these:

1. eat right (a major problem), get sufficient exercise, sleep well (a major problem for me), rest, play, work in balance
2. use my mind creatively and for various problems, read, etc
3. take time for husband, son, friends
4. do the to-do lists associated with each project, in an orderly as possible way, starting with the ones most nearly completed
5. unpack and get rid of stuff!, clean and neaten

Of course there are lots of other goals, large and small, and ongoing things always cropping up that have to be factored in like my son's upcoming recitals and graduation, etc.  How to organize everything?  I have no answers.  AK!  I tend to feel overwhelmed and unworthy because I cannot seem to be able to orchestrate all this as I feel I should.  The evidence of my failure is all around me.  The world has expectations of me--and so do I!  How does one DO IT?

Simplify simplify simplify?  But the world and I keep trying to make things complicated and overwhelming!

First thing on my to-do list:  take a deep breath.  Change my clothes.  Take my son to Piano recital rehearsal.  Make dinner.  Something healthy.  Put one foot in front of the first.  Cram some exercise int here.  Try to get to bed at a reasonable time.  Stop blogging and start working.  (Blogging can be just another form of procrastination for me.)

Celebrating small successes, LOL (And KISS)

4th step note: I tend to be able to complicate anything, no matter how simple.

Take writing thank you notes, for example, for my birthday gifts.
Instead of buying a package of little tank you notes and jotting them
off, and getting back to work, I "have" to paint hand made ones for
each person individually so they will feel truly thanked and
cherished.

It's a slow process and keeps me from FIRST THINGS FIRST--doing my
work, cleaning etc.

But then I get confused about first things. Could creativity and
expressions of love sometimes actually BE the first thing?

When am I procrastinating and when am I doing something important.

Is blogging this, and asking this question just another procrastination?

Perhaps. But the blog could use a little picture. And I am
celebrating another small success--one thank you note completed.
Unfortunately, the mailman came JUST as I was finishing it
(literally!), so it will have to wait until tomorrow to go out.

I have a different way of expressing KISS: Keep it simple, SWEETIE! I can express it very nicely, but can I DO it? Aye, that is the question.

Celebrate Small Successes (Spring at Shangri-La)

Celebrate Small Successes I am a hard task -master to myself (and sometimes to others, though I don't mean to be.) I have high expectations, at least about certain things. But Sonja Lyubomirsky says, "Celebrate small successes. Celebrate steps along the way." She says, "Make a goal, and then make subgoals, and then, if necessary, subgoals of those. Celebrate each success, small, medium and large."

So, here is one of my goals: to complete and publish the Geraldine manuscripts. This is a cycle of poems about a retarded (brain damaged) girl/woman who I once knew. In order to complete the manuscript, I first have to finish writing all the poems as first drafts, and revise them.

The poems I am attempting to write are about pivotal points in Geraldine's life, as well as some representative daily poems. So, I am celebrating a small success by sharing this early (essentially first) draft of my new poem I just wrote this morning with you.

It is odd to start in the middle of the book, especially at such a pivotal point. So, before you read this poem, which remember, is not done yet, let me know if you would like to read the earlier poems FIRST so as not to spoil the surprise. LOL!

Anyways, I choose to be happy because this one tiny milestone in a vast huge larger project is completed--the first draft of a new poem.

I choose NOT to be discouraged by the fact that there are many more steps to go, but to take ONE DAY AT A TIME and do what needs to be done. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and I have already taken many steps (though many remain to be taken.)

Spring at Shangri-La (How Geraldine Returns to her Lifework, May 1990)

Aunt Geraldine places a ball of warm fluff in my cupped hand.
Tiny. Cheeping. She beams. In the box, eleven more. Ricky
stands proud at her side. Beaming too. Their faces shine like twin
headlamps in the dim coop. And Ricky, so oddly familiar.
I study him, puzzled. Geraldine adjusts the light
over the box, adds fresh water. Scoops out some messy shavings
and adds new. Slow, deliberate, careful. Chickens again,
her lifework, perhaps. Future eggs for the Home and neighbors.
Future dinners, too. Hard to imagine this mite as dinner.

I follow them out to the garden. Ricky's plot and Geraldine's
lie side by side in the patchwork of resident gardens.
Here is Grandma Ethel's plot, beside Geraldine's, on the other side.
Their three are the neatest. Their three have the most plants.
Tomatoes, squash, peas, beans, carrots. Potatoes. And more.
Lacy leaves, round leaves, hairy leaves. All small and newly
sprouted or planted and watered, from the look of them.
Some of the other plots have nothing but weeds.
Or a few straggly, wilted plants.

I wonder how Grandma Ethel works from her wheelchair
until Ricky confides that Geraldine does all three. He helps.
Sometimes, Grandma Ethel gets pushed out to supervise.
Today, she is inside playing bridge with Marjorie, Ellie,
and other residents. Her memory for card games has survived
her dementia so far. Strange workings of the mind.

Now we head out beyond the gardens. I follow Geraldine
and Ricky follows me. We walk single file down the narrow
path between the long rows of baby corn plants. This row
is well-trodden. They've been here before. Geraldine walks
with amazing grace and spryness for her size. She seems
to be getting younger. The house, barns, coops and woodshed
recede, grow evermore distant, lost in vast flat fields.
The hugeness of space here no longer feels as barren as it did
in snow. We walk and walk. Now through a wheat field. Now
through oats. A field of alfalfa. Another of corn. Woods loom ahead.

Ashes oaks and cherries are bare, maples have tiny leaves.
The forest floor is a sea of trilliums and other wildflowers.
We sit on a glacial erratic to admire them. Aunt Geraldine
and Ricky smile and smile. Sun streams through the tiny leaves
overhead in rays though a faint mist in the trees. I think I hear
the angels again, but perhaps it is only the birds. Geraldine
and Ricky hold hands and look at me shyly. "Al, we want
to get married," Ricky says. "Marjorie says we can, if you let us."

Mary Stebbins Taitt

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-------this line and everything below this line is not part of the poem------ 080604-0929-1b (Keith, earlier drafts, in "current work" looseleaf.)

First things FIRST! I need to EAT breakfast. I started this first today.