Going for a Black Belt in Life

My cousin had been going through a really rough time for the past couple of years. She had a really demanding job and the love of her life was very sick, in and out of the hospital. Emotionally drained, she realized she needed to take better care of herself, but wasn't sure where to start.

She read an article about the martial arts that, as she put it, "essentially reframed discipline as doing what you need to in order to protect what is most valuable to you". She thought about the things we do every day toward that goal, and decided why not work on earning belts for these life skills. Set a simple goal and achieve it. Then, when you've mastered it (whenever that is), you add another skill or set of skills to master.

For her, what she eventually decided she needed to master was "creative compassion and joyful justice." She decided to do at least 7 kind and compassionate things for herself each day to earn her yellow belt. The examples she gave were "eat healthy food and drink lots of water and tea, walk, spend some time in stillness, spend some time knitting, and spend some time with my sweetie."
And when she realized that she was doing these things without having to think about them or plan them, she awarded herself her yellow belt.

I thought this was a great idea, and thought about how I could apply it in my own life.
Where I often have trouble is watching out for my health. I don't get enough sleep, I eat unhealthy food, I forget to take medicine or vitamins, and spend too much time sitting. So I'm working on my yellow belt in health. I have a set of modest health-related goals I need to achieve each day, and once I've made them a natural part of my daily routine, I can start thinking about the next life skill I want to master.

In the martial arts, a black belt is never the end. Even black belts keep achieving new levels; there's always more to learn. So as my life and circumstances change, I can keep working on the things I need to learn to have a happy and fulfilling life.

If this idea appeals to you, think about what simple thing you'd like to make an everyday habit. What do you want to get your yellow belt in, and what do you need to do to achieve it?

2014 New Year's Resolutions

I'm not going to bother linking to last year's New Year's resolution post, because I didn't keep a single one of them. On to bigger and better things!

Resolution #1: Lose 15 pounds

One weird tip...

I've looked at several size charts online today to make sure I have these numbers right: my waist is a size 14-16 and my hips are a size 6-8. This means that there is not a pair of pants outside the maternity department that fits me properly. I am tired of pants that fall down unless I wear a belt tight enough to cut off my circulation. I am tired of showing my butt to the world every time I bend over or squat down. I even bought a pair of high-waisted "mom jeans," hoping this would solve my problem. They also sag unless I cinch them mercilessly with a belt.

Back when I weighed 15 lbs. less, I didn't have this problem. So I'm hoping that if I lose the weight, I will also solve my pants problem. In the meantime, I'm going to wear more dresses and skirts.

Resolution #2: Do something creative for 20 minutes each day

If music be the food of love, play on, for at least
it is calorie-free.

I got the idea for this resolution from this post on copyblogger: The New Year's Writing Resolution You Can Actually Keep. The author recommends resolving to spend 20 minutes each day in January writing. The idea is that after a month, this will develop into a habit. And if you can't commit to 20 minutes, try 10. And if that's too much, try writing just one sentence every day.

Because I'm such an INTP, I couldn't limit myself to writing, so I'm going to spend 20 minutes each day either writing, playing the mandolin, or making art. And I'm counting this blog post as today's 20 minutes, since it took me longer than that and involved both writing and photography.

I thought about committing to completing a specific ouvre, but since I failed utterly at resolutions like that last year, I'm just going to work on whatever inspires me at the moment.

Resolution #3: Clean out the living room

This week on Hoarders...

A few years ago, we refinished the floors in the office and family room, so everything in those two rooms got moved into the living room. Then, before we managed to put everything back, we had to do some major kitchen repairs, so everything from the kitchen and hall closets went in there, too. This is in addition to all the stuff that's actually supposed to be in the living room.

We've finally been able to start moving things back into the kitchen, but it's been slow going, since the cabinets and drawers aren't finished yet. A lot of this junk is exactly that: junk. It needs to leave the house by the back door, go directly to the dumpster or the Salvation Army, and never be seen again. The pile is so large, though, that I've been putting off dealing with it. No more!

In my fantasy, the living room will become a reading and music room. My boys will learn to play the piano and I will sit at the secretary and keep up with my correspondence. This room will also be a beautifully decorated cabinet of curiosities where I can entertain my friends. We will sit in the
vintage chairs and hold jam sessions while sipping cocktails. But this dream will never become a reality if I can't get rid of things like that stack of 20 empty yogurt tubs I thought I might need someday.

If I can accomplish even one of these resolutions, I'll be doing better than last year. Here's to progress!

How I Think

graphic by Susanna King

An email from company HQ suggested that everyone in my division consider getting the Insurance Industry Generalist Certification. It's not mandatory but the higher ups suggest it would be useful. I took a look at what that training involved, and I saw that while it would be useful to have that certification on my resume, doing the required training to get it would be rather tedious.

Then I thought to myself, I could make it less tedious. I could imagine that the rules of insurance are the laws of a strange kingdom (call it "Seguridad"), and I must understand and master these arcane laws in order to win my freedom from the evil queen who has enslaved me. I could even write down the story of my quest (in my copious free time?).

And then I thought, if I have to do that in order to learn these things, should I really be trying to learn them at all? The problem is, I have used this strategy for so many years to stave off boredom that I've worn a pathway in my mind. At my age, I don't think I can erase my proclivity to turn everything into a story. I can only let my imagination have its way, refuse to write it down and try to carry on and be productive.

Mic Fright

I have no problem getting up in front of people and performing. I've been doing it since I was a five-year-old squeaking out "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on the violin. Two people or two thousand, friends or strangers, solo or in a group, it doesn't phase me. Want me to put on a pink wig and sing a song I composed myself in Spanish? Dance to "Baby Got Back" in front of the entire student body? Earnestly recite poetry or psalms or lead a group discussion? Been there, done that. Needless to say, I don't suffer from stage fright.

Put me in front of a microphone, in front of an audience, and I'm fine. But put me in front of the same microphone and hit the "record" button, and my nerves turn to water. I forget everything I've practiced, everything I know. All I can think is "No mistakes! No mistakes! This is permanent! Don't mess up!" Every tiny flub is magnified a thousand times: A slightly misplaced finger that would otherwise be smoothed over becomes an obvious wrong note; a tiny glitch in the rhythm becomes a stumble, and suddenly I'm hopelessly lost.

I don't know why I suffer from "mic fright." Maybe I haven't had as much practice recording myself as I have playing for others. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist. Maybe I just need to get really, really drunk before I try to record anything so I'm incapable of stressing out. I don't know.

What I do know is that I have 32 years' worth of songs I've written stored inside my head, and if I want my music to outlive me, I'd better start backing it up somewhere. That means recording my songs, whether I like it or not. I've tried to do it before, and was always able to find some excuse to stall. I couldn't record yet because I needed this piece of software or that piece of hardware. Well, basic sound recording is so brain-dead simple now that I have no more excuses.

I'm setting myself a goal of recording one song a week. They don't have to be in any particular order. They don't even have to sound good. They just have to get done. If this helps me to get over my mic fright, so much the better, but that's not the point. I need to push past what's holding me back and get my songs out in the wild, where they can be heard and sung and, with any luck, enjoyed.

Variety or Success

Variety or success: Pick one. As I near the middle of my life, I'm having to come to terms with a lot of the choices I've made. One that occasionally frustrates me is that my success is not commensurate with my potential. But when I think back on what I could have done differently, I realize that, faced with the option of single-minded pursuit or variety, I always chose variety.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to try cheerleading.
That's me on the far left.

One reason I chose to go to Sewanee was that they didn't require me to declare a major until my sophomore year. Looking back now, I do wish I had maybe majored in art, but at the time, I had studied so much art already, I was eager to try all the things I'd never tried before: film history, cheerleading, religious studies, Greek life. I was eventually forced to pare down my activities because there are only so many hours in a day, but I continued that eclectic approach to my studies for the rest of my time on the Mountain, taking electives in choreography and Japanese.

Making an ice cream cone out of feathers wasn't part of
the official curriculum at AIA. This was a project for a
creative club my friends & I started.

When I realized that I needed to go back to school to get a job in the field I was really interested in, I chose the Art Institute of Atlanta over the other available art schools mainly because their new Multimedia degree program let me take classes from several different disciplines: design, video, animation, and web/interactive. I did well enough there that I got a good internship, which turned into a good job. But once I was settled there, true success eluded me because, once again, I couldn't make myself focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else.

I could have taken off on my own to create a start-up, as some of my co-workers did, but that would have meant putting all my time and effort into that one thing. I wanted to keep playing in a band. I wanted to have a boyfriend, and get married. While I do regret some missed opportunities, I don't regret any of the things I did. I don't know that I could have made any other decision and been happy.

My career, such as it is, has been like crossing a stream by hopping from rock to rock. There's no particular goal in mind other than not falling in and drowning, so when one rock seems about to tumble away beneath me, I hop to the next closest one. I figure as long as I'm safely above water, I'm doing all right. And now that I'm carrying a family with me, jumping in and letting myself sink or swim isn't a viable option.

So I'm trying to find peace with the fact that I just don't possess the sort of single-minded drive required for true success. I am grateful for all the wonderful life experiences my pursuit of variety has given me. I need to remember that gratitude, and somehow translate it into happiness and contentment, because at this point in my life, I am who I am, and I don't expect I'm ever going to change.

Why I Learned to Play the Viola

Seth Godin opines that if you're feeling stuck, your problem may not be that you can't find the answer. Rather, you should consider asking a different question.

The only picture I could find of me playing the viola, with the band
Aromatic in Atlanta, 1999.

One day during orchestra practice in high school, our music teacher, Mr. Walker, announced that someone had donated a viola to the school. He asked if anyone was interested in learning to play it. Immediately, my hand shot up.

At that point, I had been playing the violin for ten years. I wasn't great, but I wasn't awful either. I was third-chair second violin in our school orchestra, right above the kids who were just learning to play and below the ones who had been playing about as long as I had but were more dedicated about practicing.

For some people, the orchestra system of ranked chairs may be motivating: you can aspire to move up the ranks by getting better than the people ahead of you. I never felt that way. For me, playing the violin was about making music, not competing for accolades. Why would I want to spend all my free time practicing in hopes of knocking Won Woo out of his position as concertmaster? He was doing a great job and I had no desire to replace him. When Mr. Walker held up that viola, I saw my chance to get out of the violin rat race altogether. There were no other violas in our orchestra at that time. I would be the only one, contributing something unique to the overall sound.

With the viola, I had to learn a new set of strings and the alto clef. My violin teacher made me start over re-learning songs I'd learned when I was six years old. But I didn't mind because I was doing something different and learning new things. I was filling a hole in the score that I hadn't even known was there.

Some people are motivated by the desire to compete and win in a crowded field. But some of us are motivated by finding the problem no one else has even tried to solve and, by turning our attention to it, make the whole orchestra sound a little more complete.