Fretting

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I am fabulous at fretting.

I actually looked up the definitions of the word, and it’s fascinating how its use in science is akin to its use in describing peoples’ actions or behaviors…

“to wear away or consume by gnawing” (dictionary.com)

Wow. What an apt description. And I am a champion fretter. Seriously. There are nights when I wake up and cannot get back to sleep because my mind is turning the same (usually small) worry over and and over. Perseverating about it. (Another word I love, that Chrome spellchecker does not seem to. That’s okay – it didn’t like colonoscopy until recently, either…) 
Anyway. I can’t quite figure out how to break this cycle. It’s like once I hit on something that I can worry or fret about – usually for way too long – I just come back to it over and over and over again.
Sometimes distraction works. Other times, my mind returns to that same worry whenever I take a break from whatever else I am working on. 
It honestly drives me bonkers – and I wish I could change it. The best part, of course, is that my worries are usually completely unfounded. Like this weekend, when I was worried that I had not heard back from a colleague about a piano that she was hoping to buy from me. I worried that I had inadvertently insulted her during an in-person exchange a few weeks ago. Turns out, she was just figuring out with her wife how they could make room for said piano. All that worry, for nothing. That’s how it usually turns out. Sometimes, of course, my concerns are borne out. But for the most part, nothing ever comes of my (sometimes hours of) fretting. 
Just another habit to break or work on. I should be grateful that I can (?) focus on these relatively small worries. I don’t have many BIG things weighing on me right now. I know it’s part of how I am wired – so I suppose the alternative to changing it is learning to accept it and perhaps shut it down sooner. Hm. Another topic for therapy day, I suppose! Onward. 

Walking to the top

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Before you dream about the view from the summit, ask yourself if you’re willing to keep your head down, focus on the path, and spend your life walking up the side of a very big hill.
It takes years of walking to earn a minute at the top.
~ James Clear

This quote helped me reflect on my current work life, and my frustration with my inability to get funding for my research. Something about the argument I am making in my grant proposals is not resonating with the people who review them – and those who then make the funding decisions. 
I know that it’s a process. 
I know there will be hurdles along the way. 
But my goodness, sometimes I see the ways in which I have inadvertently sabotaged myself, and I want to time-travel back to that version of me, and talk some sense into her! 
I cleaned out my office over the weekend, which was a wonderful accomplishment. I hadn’t managed to do so over break, as things were more chaotic than anticipated. But I shredded an entire file box of papers, recycled many more, and returned many, many office supplies to the shared cabinet. 
Those files I shredded? From a study I got money for, conducted, and then ultimately only got two publications out of. I could have done SO MUCH MORE if I had simply put my head down, focused on the path, and walked up the side of that very big hill. 
Instead? I became overwhelmed, and paralyzed, and had to spend more time than I anticipated working on my teaching. 
I also spent more time than I should have driving 3 hours one-way most weekends, as I was working in a town where we did not, technically, live (although I was there more than I was “home” most months…). 
I know that I should give that version of me grace, and that there were many, many other things going on. But my goodness. I also wish that I could have done it differently… 
Which I think is what’s fueling my determination to do better this time. I got a second chance, in a new place, with new people, and (if you ask me) better ideas. Now I just have to put in the work to make it happen, however I can. 

Optimism

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OPTIMISM

by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.

Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam

returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous

tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,

it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.

But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,

mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Resilience. Persistence. Not resistance, but tenacity. 
I love the imagery of the tree in this poem – the tenacity to seek out light when it is blocked on one side. 
In many ways, this echoes the “deeper” book that I am reading on the weekends (I often have one fluffy before-bed book, one evening book that’s either a mystery or a novel, one non-fiction book that I mostly read on weekends, and then a “deeper” book that is my usual Sunday-morning-I-am-not-religious-but-like-rituals book…). The Obstacle is the Way is a book on Stoic philosophy by Ryan Holiday. 
And this beautiful poem echoes so many of the important messages in that book. 
When you encounter blocks and hurdles? Go over, go around, go under. Just don’t give up. 
Recognize that the obstacles will come – they will always come – but that you can overcome them. 
I am working on this – rather than letting myself get derailed by failures and / or stumbles, I am doubling down and working harder on whatever it was that went off course. 
Persistence. Optimism. Resilience. 

Why do I always forget this??

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Every year. Every single year. I forget how chaotic and unproductive the first 1-2 weeks of the semester are. It’s completely bonkers around higher education in those weeks. Students are back, faculty are all back, there are more people in the building, meetings, other obligations. It’s back to back to back most days and then when you DO get a mini break on the weekends? It’s time to go in and reply to all the emails that you neglected all week… which often number in the hundreds.

Keeping all the balls in the air, remembering to eat and sleep and oh, yeah, work on my own stuff (ha) is exhausting. It doesn’t help when you wake up 1.5 hours before your alarm 3 days in a row and have difficulty going back to sleep. Yeah. That’s been fun.

I just have to remember that it’s temporary. Things will smooth out… eventually. The rhythm of life in the middle of the semester will return. But for now? I feel like a headless chicken in a centrifuge. Seriously. I’m happy when I know what day it is (which, admittedly, has been a challenge this week, since we did not convene classes until Tuesday…). I’m also happy when I don’t completely forget important things.

Marshaling my energy to get through these weeks…and knowing that I will.. helps sustain my persistence and perseverance.

Now, if I could just remember that this happens every. single. semester. Wouldn’t that be nice?

We are each a continuous becoming…

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That lovely phrase was in the Brain Pickings email by Maria Popova.

They have an amazing ability to curate insightful, timely, and thought-provoking excerpts from an enormous variety of books – as well as the ability to write, and write well, as reflected in the above phrase.

And what a hopeful phrase that is. The idea that we are all a continuous becoming – that we are never ‘done’, but instead, always evolving, changing…. becoming.

I’ve said before in this space that I do not anticipate being the same person on 12/31/2020 as I am  today, and I do not want to be. I want this to be a year of growth and change and evolution.

A year of becoming.

But another mass email this morning had another, very relevant phrase… that to change, we must embrace the discomfort. And that… that is what is hardest for me (and for, well, probably everyone?). Change is not always fun, it is not always comfortable, but when we get to the point of needing to change something? Then we have to live with the accompanying discomfort.

I’m trying to live with – and love – the uncertainty and difficulty that is facing me right now, as I seek to make changes in multiple aspects of my life. It’s hard, particularly for one who cherishes habits and routines. But dammit, I am determined.

This morning, faced with the realization that if I don’t step it up, I won’t meet one of my health goals by 3/1… a goal set by my provider… I literally said, out loud, Bring. It. On.

I’m hoping to bring more of that attitude to more areas of my life.

Seriously, 2020. Bring. It. On.
It’s time for change.