Yesterday morning was sunny but chilly here. I ran out to the mailbox (on the far side of the house next door, maybe 200 yards away?) so I checked the temp (41°) before heading out without a coat. “Gorgeous,” I thought to myself, that time of year when—even if it’s chilly—you can feel the heat of the sun and trick yourself into thinking that it’s actually warm. I popped the envelopes in the mail, u-turned, and—bam—what a headwind! I hadn’t even noted any wind at my back on the way, yet the walk home was positively blustery and frigid. Brrr.
This served up an important reminder to me, as I traverse the uneven landscape of the day to day. Am I attuned to the right details in the right way at the right time?
Case in point, from a while back, while walking on some unfamiliar (to me) terrain, and my friend the local said, “Let’s turn around now because the way back is almost all uphill.”
Wait, what? I had no idea we were even going downhill.
Lightbulb moment.
I need to enjoy the downhills at least as much as I let the uphills annoy me. I need to do a better job noticing and acknowledging changes. Changes that seem small might actually be big. Or they may be small but mighty. Either way, if I’m not paying attention I miss the signs. I miss the chance to prepare. I miss the possibility.
Why would I knowingly put myself at a perpetual disadvantage?
Change is one thing. It’s persistent, it’s all around us, and it often happens to us—like it or not. Some change is immaterial, other change is high-impact—and either way it comes at us almost constantly.
Transformation is different than change. It’s more personal. More lasting. More substantial. And more substantive. At times life-changing—for better or for worse.
Not all change = transformation, but all transformation involves change.
And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as my life is at a weird crossroad of change, transformation, and stagnancy, with an accompanying feeling of going into the intersection of it all in reverse.
In other words, my life is ripe for some sort of collision.
Something’s gotta give…yet I can’t force change, transformation, or anything else.
So then what gives?
All I can do is do the work to (try to) make the change needed to (hopefully) result in the transformation I seek. No shortcuts, no guarantees.
So here I am chipping away, little by little.
I pick up on pieces of things in my day to day, and when it comes to change and transformation the pieces typically fall into one of three neat and tidy categories: practice, place, and perception. (The irony is in not lost on me that the categories are neat and tidy while the life that surrounds it is in total disarray. 🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️)
When it comes to practice, for example, it looks like this…in the morning I wake up, maybe I’m feeling refreshed, maybe I’m feeling like I was up most of the night, yet somehow I can’t tell you how I slept.
Gotta see what the data says. Gotta check the Oura app.
Wait, what? You need an app to tell you how you slept?
Kind of.
When I first got my Oura ring, I wanted to understand what the heck was going on with my sleep (which I thought was bad—and I was right). Over time I’ve come to learn a lot about how things are connected. I’ve come to understand the impacts of my behavior on my sleep, my readiness, m vitals. This makes me think a lot about the rise of data and analytics, and the role they play in our lives. Specifically I think about this: what happens when I don’t like the data? Do I ignore it? Consider it in context? Heed it blindly despite what I feel? (Data says I slept like sh-t, might as well feel like sh-t and have a sh-t of a day?) And there’s a huge difference between understanding (bad) behavior and actually changing it. (This last bit was reinforced when I revisited the post I just linked to…long story short, I need to get out of my own way!)
Changing practice (behavior) takes time. And there are various things that factor into it—understanding, willingness, degree of desire, etc. Our investment in those things goes a long way to achieving successful outcomes (sustainable and meaningful change aka transformation), but we need to invest. (There’s an emergent theme here…it takes work. To make change, to accept change, to be patient and wait for results—it can be hard work.)
Then there’s a more obvious change in the world around me, change of surroundings, change in place. Same things, different things…different things, same things…
Simple things like walking a different route can rejigger my thinking patterns. Or going to have dinner at the home of an old friend you don’t see often—new topics of conversation, eating off of different dishes. Small things trigger different mental outcomes. Plus Spring is springing here on the daily, and it’s springing like a Slinky down the stairs on a Christmas morning (before being fought over by two siblings who can’t remember which Slinky belongs to who and they end up in a distended tangled mess, but that’s another matter altogether). It looks and smells and feels different. It’s like the same landscape painted with different colors, in a different medium, by an artist with a new style. So even when I’m in my customary outdoor spaces, they’re different now.
Where I am, and what and who I am surrounded with, plays a huge part not only in how I feel, but also in what I think and how I act. Some of it’s fleeting, some of it’s lasting, but it all influences me to some degree. There are aspects of my surroundings that I can manage completely, and others that are completely outside of my control. The things that I can manage, well, I’m wise to remember that a change might do me good, and to make that change. When it comes to the things that I can’t control, I try to shift my focus to my response or to focus on the cyclicality of it all. The tide goes in and it goes out. Greens give way to browns which birth greens again. The earth keeps spinning and somehow we remain standing.
In terms of perception, I’ve been trying (hard) to transform my perception of myself—and this involves making some of the many (MANY!) changes needed to—as described earlier—get out of my own way. I’m having zero (ZERO!!!) luck on the job front, which on one hand sucks but on the other hand is fine. I’m still trying to reconcile what I want to do with what I’m good at and trying to find the sweet spot where those things meet up with that necessary evil known as a paycheck.
I’ve been doing a lot more writing, because I want to do more writing. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it may make positive progress. I’m participating in a “50,000 words in April” challenge, which for me means trying to organize my thoughts and my writings into what may or may not end up as a collection of essays. This isn’t about anything more than addressing what the great Maya Angelou tells us is the greatest agony of all, that of bearing an untold story inside of us.
I’m trying to process the so-called agony inside of me.
I have a nephew who likes to write too. He’s 25 and keeps reminding me that the goal is “to write something you’re proud of; that’s it.” He’s right, I think. So I am working on it. But I’m not just writing—I trying to learn more about the craft, as the pile of writing books in my “to read” pile will attest.
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how voice dictation is the way to go. “Write” while you walk, talking out loud and letting technology do the rest. That allows you to get it all out there and then spend your time and talent on sharpening your points. In the past I’d done this more to capture ideas while I walk without breaking stride. As I’m trying to be more expansive in my use of voice dictation, I see the value, yes. But I also have to master the art of being comfortable with talking to myself in public and having it seem as if I am talking on the phone and not to myself. Based on the results of the dictation, I also seem to be in need of some speech therapy. Whether it’s Siri or the native dictation app on my PC, there is a lot of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. (A LOT!!!!!)
I recently put myself out there and applied for a job that was 100% writing. I made it to the second round but not to the third. My “strong” writing needs some “further development” per the company founder. Fair enough. But it’s also frustrating given the number of typos I see on the regular in their online posts. We’re all works in progress. And some of us could use a break for crying out loud.
I’m not done with this writing stuff. I’m barely getting started.
In any case, lately it feels as if there are many (MANY!!!!) times that the change I am experiencing is not so easily and neatly compartmentalized and categorized.
My brain is incapable of focusing, except at night when I’ desperate for the sleep that so-often eludes me. Those are the times when I have a laser-like focus on things that come from nowhere. Like who went through my desk in 6th grade and stole my pens and rearranged my papers when I was at Disney World?
My left brain and my right brain are on a collision course, but the question remains—when they meet, will it be a well-planned and executed feat of technical genius, like the Dragon SpaceX capsule meeting with the International Space Station or will it be like a couple of jalopies banging into each other for the sh-ts and giggles of a small but rowdy audience at the Brockton Fair?
Also, before I go, I need to throw this one out there…it’s about physical change, kind of. Don’t get me started on when or why, but the Irish Sports Page (aka the obituaries) have always been eye catching for me.
There’s a certain physical change that takes place as one ages, and it may or may not be a transformation (if you’re lucky, you keep your youthful looks indefinitely, or you get better with age like Tom Brady), and when it comes to the obituaries and your parting picture, you have to embrace that change, own your physical truth, as it were—use a current picture, for crying out loud!
When I was reading the paper the other day, I saw this picture, and my gut reaction was (gasp!) “Poor, dear girl.”
…and then I saw that she died at 96.
And boy did I feel duped!
Nellie Oleson didn’t die. (But this doppelgänger who did well may have been one of her schoolmates on the prairie. 🤦🏼♀️)
As a reader, it infuriates me when I’m overcome by the sadness of a young person taken too soon…only to learn that they actually were old…and so too was the accompanying picture. (At least this didn’t violate my other personal obituary rule…when the person is really old, you can’t say they died “unexpectedly.” I can live with “suddenly,” but I can’t deal with “unexpectedly.” There’s an age at which death kind of becomes expected, always…no? Because at 90+ years, it should be kind of expected, always…no? At least in this case it said she died “peacefully.”)
The crossroads are dangerous. I’m on a crash course. But this heightened awareness coupled with everything I’ve learned thus far about navigating tricky intersections should (SHOULD!!!!!) allow me to assess the situation, make a smart move, pass through the crossroads relatively unscathed, and then hit the gas as I enjoy the journey to the next destination…wherever it is.
Thanks for taking this ride with me. I love my time here, and I appreciate you being here with me, so much.
Have a great week.
Love you too.
Crossroads. A good way to look at it. Love your writing. Keep at it.