The Receptionist: challenge accepted

Showing posts with label challenge accepted. Show all posts

Turns Out There Are More Grudges In Here Than Expected

An animated gif of a clock with the hands advancing quickly all the way around.

A while back I wrote about giving grudges an expiry date and how it was unexpectedly effective in helping me release anger that really had no place in my heart anymore.

Here's a twist: what about all the grudges I hold against MYSELF? What about those???

Turns out that those arguments I didn't handle exactly perfectly that I keep having run through my mind are actually grudges. Same with the time I didn't say exactly how I felt about someone at the time when it could have made a difference or the times I was mean as a teenager--but only because they crop back up in my mind, uninvited, just often enough to ignite regret.

They need an expiry date too.

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How A Week of Reading Deprivation Changed My Life for the Better AND Worse

Photo by Thought Catalog.

For the past week, I have faced one of the most challenging of personal challenges that I have ever challenged myself to: READING DEPRIVATION.

Taken from The Artist's Way (which I wrote about nearly five years ago when I tried doing the program for the first time and petered out about 2/3 of the way through), reading deprivation is exactly what it sounds like: you spend a week not reading anything. BUT! Like an infomercial in the 90s, THAT'S NOT ALL! The point is to stop inputting other people's voices and ideas into your brain so that you're left with your own thoughts and creativity, which means you not only can't read things (books, articles, whatever), you also can't listen to podcasts or talk radio, watch TV or movies or streamed things, or hang out on social media.

(It may sound a bit over-the-top, but at least it's not dopamine fasting, the weird tech bro trend that literally takes away happiness and is just bad for your brain.)

Here is what I discovered:

IT. IS. SO. HARD. Reading deprivation basically takes out every single default activity or distraction. Every moment of downtime you have to actually THINK OF SOMETHING TO DO.

It's incredible how much effort it is to think of things to do and how much MORE effort it is if you try to think of things that will be FUN or make you HAPPY. (Seriously, why is it so hard to think of a fun thing to do?)

You know how people leave social media because they feel it wastes their time and they want to be productive? Yeah, no. If that's really your goal, just leaving social media isn't enough because there are SO MANY OTHER meaningless activities that will creep right in! If you don't want YouTube rabbit holes to replace your social scrolling, you have to go COLD TURKEY and take it all away. Then watch as those little scraps of time you normally filled with social media/podcasts/streaming become both daunting and rife with possibilities. THIS is when you start knocking those long-awaited things off your to-do list!

In general, I felt more clear-headed. Normally, I have a podcast or TV show on in the background every spare moment that I'm not working (and then I listen to music). I didn't realize how much filling my head with people talking was really bogging down my brain.

I also got to work earlier because I didn't spend 15 minutes with my breakfast looking at my phone.

Ultimately, it turns out that this week has been a weird mix of clarity/freedom and oppression/frustration. I felt both liberated and imprisoned and now that it's coming to an end, I want to hold onto the gift of the freedom and reject that dang oppression.

BUT HOW??? We all know that any kind of "cleanse" or intense transformation of our lives fades away into nothing as soon as the restrictions holding it in place disappear. And reading deprivation is not a sustainable way to live.

My plan is to start with my morning routine. My goal is to get to work without having already cluttered my brain up, which means that instead of listening to podcasts and spending breakfast with my phone, I'll listen to music and eat breakfast with my thoughts or a notebook instead.

Wish me luck! And if you want to try your own reading deprivation week, let me know and I'll cheer you on!

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What Are You Afraid Of?

A person with a white sheet over them (like a ghost) standing in front of some scraggly woods. It's a little spooky and sad.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso.

Q: What are you afraid of?

A: Everything.

Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but I have lived with a lot of fear in my life. Right now, my cat is curled up on my lap and feeling too light and I am afraid she is dying and I will not have her to love anymore.

I just listened to the FEAROLOGY episode(s - part one and two) of the podcast Ologies and listening to them was like getting one side of a therapy session and I NEED to share and unpack them with you.

First up is a question: what are you afraid of?

We tend to avoid thinking about our fears, for the obvious reasons of them being scary and being scared is unpleasant and fear is usually trying to PROTECT us from something, so why would we poke at it? But writing out a list of our fears, from deep to trivial, can reveal so much about who we are and what our deepest desires are. Then, once you've seen your fears laid out in front of you, you even have the choice to pick one and face it. (If you're into that kind of wildness.)

I want to do this, but I am (go figure) scared. I am afraid for a lot of reasons, but I think deep down I am afraid of what looking at my fears will reveal about me: that I'm really weak and pathetic. That any strength or competence I have is a shell over a lame, loser underbelly. Which, honestly, is probably kind of true, but it's true of all of us. We all have our strong, competent exoskeleton that gets us through life and a bucket of mush for insides.

So if this is true for everyone, and if I deeply believe that your life can improve by studying and understanding your own bucket of mush, then why do I keep avoiding looking at the fear part of mine? Are my fears special? Am I going to somehow be extra pathetic? Am I the Award-Winningly Most Pathetic Mush-Bucket-Inside-Exoskeleton of them all? Is it even possible that our deepest fears can be pathetic? They must all tie into basic human needs - in fact, according to Poppenroth, our non-survival-based fears are either based on the fear of being out of control or the fear of not being enough. (That one hit me HARD, you guys. I paused the podcast to sit with it for a moment.)

By the by, the survival/non-survival-based categorization? Poppenroth calls them Factual and Fictional fears. Basically, factual fears are things that are physically happening that threaten our safety or survival in some way. Fictional fears come from the stories we tell ourselves in our heads when we imagine being alone forever or losing our job or that everybody is looking at us and somehow that means something bad will happen.

For people living in safe homes and parts of the world, our fears are pretty much all fictional. That doesn't mean they aren't important (fiction matters! Stories are powerful.), what it does mean is that we can face them and stay alive and maybe even not be controlled by them anymore.

Okay, guys, I am going to do it, no later than this weekend. You want to do it too? We can come back and talk about it.

Here's what I will do: I will make a list of the things I am afraid of; I will spend some time looking that list right in the face and asking myself what the root of each fear is; I will understand myself better and also maybe (no promises) pick one to face down in mental combat.

I will let you know how it goes next week, and also share more from the Fearology episode, because there is so much more to dig into!

This post is PART ONE. Read PART TWO to learn about how to feel better and the cultural rebranding of fear as stress here.

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Challenge Update: Giving Grudges an Expiry Date WORKS!

A little while ago I wrote about the notion of giving grudges an expiry date. Well, I am pleased (or at least able) to report that I have had the opportunity to practice it in realtime, and it worked!

A couple of weeks, I realized I was holding a grudge. It had to do with a past argument with an ex-boyfriend, the kind that came up a few times in our relationship and where I consistently felt like I was misunderstood and not heard. (I'm sure he had some similar feelings.) I noticed that I was still reliving the argument and imagining what I wish I had said to him--a mental activity that achieves absolutely nothing except churning up old, unpleasant feelings all over again.

Then it clicked! This is it! This is the kind of thing I wanted to give an expiration date to! This is a grudge!

I decided that this grudge was permitted until Christmas, and then after that, it will have gone sour and need to be thrown out. Guess what? It's not nearly Christmas yet, and I can already tell this has worked.

Since that moment, the argument has started to replay in my psyche just once, and as soon as I realized what was happening I reminded myself that this one only lives until Christmas. It was like pulling the stopper out of a blow-up toy. The whole thing just kind of deflated and I instantly felt the uselessness of holding on for even that long. It went from "this is a thing I have unresolved, unhappy feelings about and so I'm going to relive it forever!" to "I have to hold onto this thing for HOW LONG?"

How FREAKING exciting!!! It WORKED!

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Democracy and Volunteering

A boy facing away from the camera with a t-shirt that says "volunteer" on the back.

Photo by Ray Sangga Kusuma.

"Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in."

Last weekend was the national election in Canada. The results are personally disappointing to me, but not nearly as bad as they could have been. I suspect this is the way a lot of Canadians are feeling today: disappointed but not devastated. Frustrated, in general with the limited impact of our votes.

Which is why I thought it would be a good time to remind us all (myself included) that volunteering is a thing and that it's a wonderful way to make your community a little closer to whatever your utopia is.

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Challenge Accepted: Giving Grudges an Expiry Date

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Something I have had to face in myself is the fact that I can hold a grudge for a really long time. To be fair to myself, it can take quite a lot for me to get to the point of grudge-holding, but once I'm there, it's really hard for me to leave it behind.

Case in point: I still give a nasty side eye to the restaurant whose owner made me cry 15 years ago, the baby clothing store where I worked and had many issues 10 years ago, the apartment building for the man who was particularly confusing in how he went about breaking up with me 6 years ago.

At some point, they have all become silly. It makes sense to avoid the person who made you cry's business for a little while, but for 15 years??? How does it even register after this much time? These grudges are truly ancient history--my life has moved on in a serious way, as, I'm sure, have the lives of the others involved. And yet, I still seem to care. Why?

That's why I like the idea put forward in this Manrepeller article by Harling Ross: give your grudges an expiry date. Ross is talking about petty grudges within a relationship; she and her boyfriend agreed that if something small comes up that bugs them, they have to say something within 24 hours or let it go.

I'd like to take this idea in a different direction: I want to give myself an expiry date on holding grudges, period. Once I realize I am holding a grudge, I will name it and give myself a deadline to throw it out. ("I am mad at ____ for ____ and I can hold that grudge until ____.")

My spidey senses tell me that naming the grudge in the first place will help with the process of release. Things tend to lose their power when you face and name them, and grudges, while often described in great detail, are rarely looked at directly.

Just like the shelf life of that artisanal, farm-sourced goat cheese is shorter from that of a name brand salad dressing, some grudges may have longer processing times. For that reason, I won't pre-determine any particular length. I can tell you this, though: the three grudges I described earlier have loooong expired. They're out.

UPDATE: I got an opportunity to try this out IRL and... here's the result!

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Turns Out My Relationship With Money is... Not Great. How About Yours?

A piggy bank - does your view of money reflect your view of your life?

Photo by Fabian Blank.

What's your relationship with money like? Mine is... controlled. Or controlling? It's definitely cautious. And I think it's holding me back.

I have always been very careful with money. Sure, I overspend from time to time and can splurge, but generally, it's all very guarded, because I truly never think I have enough. To a degree, not enough for right now, but mostly, not enough for that murky thing known as "the future."

It seems like I have always thought about money this way. I would obsess over "setting myself up" for life, adding up how much money I needed to earn to buy (for example) the $400K house down the street. (I realize that these days, for anyone who lives in a major city, that sounds like a steal of a deal, but this was the 90's in the suburbs, so that was crazy expensive. The house had a pond.)

What child does the math on how much she would need to earn at a summer job to buy a fancy house and then gets really really crestfallen that it's not going to be a thing?

Recently, some of my friends and I were talking about our future life plans and goals, and it became clear that the way I think about money is stopping me from dreaming about the future. Everything I envision is either impossible because it costs too much or because it could never earn me enough.

Just when I know that I need to put some effort into reforming my view of money, I come across this illustration by Hallie Bateman:

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A post shared by Hallie Bateman (@hallithbates) on Aug 1, 2019 at 7:00am PDT

I truly don't know how to feel about it.

On one hand, it smells like one of these new-agey abundance mindset things that people say will just bring all the money into your life without even trying, which my practical brain can only view as hogwash.

On the other hand, the little mantras on this illustration aren't actually about creating a spiritual magnet to draw money in from the universe. They are about your attitude towards the money that both is and isn't there. A simple reminder that money is a thing that comes and goes, that you can use it for good, and that it is not a recipe for happiness in and of itself.

Those don't seem like bad lessons.

Oh boy, here's something I just realized: my beliefs about money seem to match my beliefs about what I get out of life in general, and guess what I seem to believe that I get out of life in general? That the best I can have is to struggle to keep up with the middle of the pack.

Innnnnnteresting! (And yikes!)

The middle of the pack isn't necessarily the worst place to be (after all, we don't all need to be exceptional), but the struggle to be there isn't great.

I think I may need to embrace some of these hokey-dokey money mantras for a while and see if they change my perspective!

How about you? How do you view money? Do you think your beliefs about money matter? Do you see a connection between how you look at money and how you look at your life as a whole? (Genuinely asking!)

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Listen Up! I Want to Get Better at Listening Up

Photo by Mimi Thian.

I want to get better at active listening.

I started to learn that my listening wasn't as "active" as it could be about a year ago. I was in counselling with my former partner and our counsellor used a technique for communicating about difficult issues where one person would get free reign to share what was going on for them and the other person's job was to simply listen, ask questions, and summarize what they were hearing. They were not allowed to offer their own experience, analysis, or advice - they are simply there to provide the space to talk.

Here was my problem: I would sit quietly and pay attention while he talked and then ask questions, but my questions weren't great. Sometimes I came up blank and couldn't even think of a question. More often, they were crafted in a way to make a point instead of deepening understanding. It was more, "have you ever thought about doing it this way?" and less, "how does that make you feel?"

On the flipside, my partner was GREAT at asking insightful, curious questions that helped me deep-dive into whatever I was talking about when I was sharing.

Then I began to notice that some of my friends are equally fantastic at active listening. They always seem totally curious and are always brimming with sincere, interested questions for everyone around them.

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Here are two places where I know I go wrong with active listening:

1) I do that fun anxiety-brain thing where you are spending about 20% of your brain's processing power worrying about how you're coming across instead of actively engaging in the conversation.

(I have had it pointed out to me multiple times, even from near-strangers, that people can tell I care too much what other people think of me... So this is DEFINITELY a thing.)

2) I often think I fully understand the point that's being made before it's done. My brain jumps ahead, says, "yep, I've got it!" and is ready to share my analysis or counterpoint or simply agree and move on.

But chances are I don't have it. Chances are there is a lot more I can learn. Also, chances are there is a lot more to conversing with someone than just understanding the point they are making and then moving on with your life.

The majority of advice on active listening boils down to being curious, which is great but also that's what I was trying to do in my counselling sessions when I would sometimes not even be able to come up with a question to ask. So obviously I need to find some more specific inroads to break these habits in my brain.

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After reading around about active listening, here are a few things I'm going to try:

Relax and remind myself I'm okay.

Why do I feel the need to talk too much in the first place? Because I am compensating for some ever-present insecurity and wanting people to see me in a certain way: interesting, clever, wise, someone they would turn to for advice.

I don't need to prove I deserve to be in a conversation, though. It's okay. I'm okay.

(I mean, if it's obvious enough that strangers can pick it up after an hour in the same room, then yeah... I need to relax.)

Who, what, where, when, why, and how.

Remember these basic questions? I am going to drill them into my mind so that when I am coming up blank on a question (not because I'm not curious about what's being shared but because my brain is being annoying), I have something to fall back on.

Is there more?

This came to me from Rad Reads, who got it from the book Getting the Love You Want. Here, you just ask the person "is there more?" and give them the space to talk. Do it three times.

The thing with this one is that it's intended for couples who know that this is a thing they are doing, and in that context, it makes perfect sense. It might be weird to just ask "is there more?" to a person in conversation at a cocktail party. Perhaps there's a rephrase that will achieve the same purpose without being a bit awkward? Hit me up if you can think of one!

Become an interviewer

It occurs to me that when I have been in a position to interview someone I have had no trouble listening and coming up with questions to probe deeper. Probably because it was my one job to listen and ask questions, and I was focused on that instead of my own dang self.

Maybe I just need to shift my mindset and pretend I'm interviewing everyone I talk to? (I feel like there might be other unwanted implications to this, but heck, it's worth a try!)

Do you have any tricks you've picked up over the years to help your active listening? Or did it just come magically and easily to you because you are a super-unicorn-rainbow listener?

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The Joy of Doing Something That Once Seemed Impossible

Doing Something That Seemed Impossible: Backpacking the Sunshine Coast Trail

Photo by Tristan Pineda.

Last weekend I went backpacking along the Sunshine Coast Trail, a beautiful hut-to-hut trail along the coast of BC. It was a short jaunt of three days and two nights (just a 25km section of the 180km trail), and it was also a pretty big deal.

In the past, I wouldn't have even considered doing something like this. I had zero gear, zero know-how, and thought all hiking was a painful uphill slog. I didn't think I could do it and therefore I had no interest in trying. Why would I want to do a torturous Stairmaster in the woods, after all?

Then I started dating an outdoorsy person and slowly realized that I am actually capable of doing some of this stuff. We went for hikes, and eventually, overnight trips into the wilderness. It turned out I actually enjoyed walking around in the woods! Even with 30 pounds of stuff strapped to my back!

I slowly acquired gear. I also slowly acquired confidence in my ability to slog through the woods, in large part due to my trusty guide. My outdoorsy partner knew the best trails, he knew how to research trip reports and how to navigate. He could name the mountains as we drove past them and describe what was cool about each of them. I could follow him into the woods and we would be okay.

Then that relationship ended.

Suddenly, I didn't have a guide anymore. If I wanted to go into the woods, I had to actually make the plans, do the research, and know where I was going. All on my own! I wanted to keep going on outdoor adventures, but once again it seemed like it might be too hard.

That's why this was a big deal - I went with a friend, and for both of us, it was our first time actually planning and executing a backpacking trip without an expert "buddy" taking us along for the ride.

And now it's done! We did it! We planned it! We prepped it! We hiked it! We survived! And we had FUN!!!

It feels really good to do something that used to seem wildly impossible. I encourage everyone to try it once in a while - ideally with a physical activity that has a concrete sense of completion. One where you can finish, look back, and say, "I can't believe I did that!"

Hiking the Sunshine Coast Trail without a guide - doing something I never thought I would be capable of.

Jocelyn Pond on the Sunshine Coast Trail.

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Challenge Accepted: Scheduling Worry

Photo by Aaron Blanco Tejedor.

I don't generally consider myself to be a worrier because I'm not always coming up with worst-case scenarios or getting paralyzed by random possibilities at every turn. HOWEVER, there are some specific topics that, once they creep into my mind, create a nice, mental loop of worry that's hard to release.

One might say that I worry about the things that worry me. (Shocker.)

So I like this challenge: schedule a time to worry and then stick to it.

Apparently, it's a research-supported idea that scheduling in your worry helps reduce overall anxiety. I also can see it being effective for increasing overall happiness, productivity, relationship quality, and maybe even sleep, depending on when and how worry manifests in your life.

The advice is simple: start with a 30-minute time slot dedicated to worry, ideally scheduled a little later in the day but not right before bed. Have something to write with during that time so you can list or write about your worry. Throughout the day, if a worry pops into your head, just jot it down so that you don't forget to worry about it at the appropriate time. Then, once time's up, stop!

I really like the idea of being able to tell myself, "not now, you've got time to worry about that later."

So I'm going to try it! Let's see what happens.

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The Commonplace Book: How It's Going

I set up a commonplace book/bullet journal combo. Here is how I did it and what I like about it.

Photo by Gift Habeshaw.

A little while back I wrote about trying to keep a commonplace book, in the hopes that it might transform my life. Mostly because someone wrote on the internet that it would transform my life to keep a commonplace book, and I am very suggestible.

A commonplace book is basically a book where a person writes down interesting quotes and musings -- a place to mull over life and meaning and other such things. I likened it to an old-fashioned bullet journal.

So here is what I have done:

I set my notebook up like a bullet journal, with the first pages devoted to a symbol key, index, and future log (a place to jot down things that need to happen in the next six months that I don't want to think about now).

Entries are individually numbered, not dated (because I don't like trying to remember what date it is, which sounds ridiculous when I actually say it, but there you go), and each one gets a symbol that shows what kind of entry it is, to make it easier to find things at a glance (a little cloud, for example, is an inspiration/deep thought and a checkmark is a to-do list). I drew little margins on the pages so that I would have space to write the numbers and symbols for each entry.

The index is the place to log things I'm going to want to refer back to, I don't put everything in there. I just note the things I know I'll want to reference back to and their entry numbers. Categories with multiple entries that I want to refer back to are listed together (for example, my DnD notes all have a drawing of a 20-sided die, and the index just has that symbol and then the entry number for each DnD note.)

Then I started writing! My notebook is definitely a bullet journal/commonplace notebook mash up. Basically, it's my everything book.

How I set up my commonplace book/bullet journal to have one place for everything.

One of the only spreads in my book that is not too personal to share.

I had two goals with this project, one was to transform my catch-all notebook into a more effective resource, and the other was to create more space for creative thinking and musing.

I think that so far, the first goal has been achieved and the second has not (although I did get on a bus forgetting the book I am currently reading and think, 'that's okay, I have my notebook', knowing that I could even just write and think with it, so that is something.) Also, I realized when I was talking to a friend about it that this notebook brings me GREAT JOY, which was not a goal but is an excellent side effect.

Here are the elements that helped with the first goal of transforming my catch-all notebook into a more effective resource:

I like the numbering and the symbols. It's nice to look at a glance and know what kind of notes I have on a page spread as well as to find something in particular.

I like writing quotes down here instead of going through the hassle of trying to highlight them on my Kobo, which is not only super frustrating because Kobos are not great tools, but it's a pain to look them up later. This takes longer, but it ultimately far more pleasant and I have reviewed them more often, which is kind of the point.

I like (and have been using) the index as a place to track the things I'm going to want to come back to later.

Here's something fun with this book that might lend to the second goal: sometimes I just open up and flip through my book. I NEVER used to do that. So that's neat! Perhaps the additional space for creative thinking and musing is just a seed that has been planted but not yet sprouted.

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Challenge Update: Cutting Down Phone Use

Photo by rawpixel.

Last week I decided to try a new way to cut down phone use, that that was to make it slightly less convenient to pick up my phone during idle moments. The main way I have done this is by keeping my phone in a drawer in my desk at work. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Here's the update: it worked! I am definitely picking up my phone less often. I don't just mindlessly pick it up, because it's not even there, and opening a drawer is just enough extra effort that I can stop myself from doing it in those moments.

Hooray! Success! Now let's see how long I keep this up before rationalizing that my phone use "isn't that bad" and "who cares anyways?"

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Challenge Accepted: How Jack White Inspired Me to Cut Down My Phone Use

Is it liberating to be away from your phone?

Photo by Hugh Han.

I've been spending extra time lately thinking about my relationship with my phone. These days, I expect that most of us are at least a little bit troubled with how we use these devices and the never-ending pull they have on our minds.

I used to refer to it as an addiction, but I've realized that is the wrong word. It's not an addiction because when I am away from my phone, aside from that initially uncomfortable feeling of "something's missing", I don't feel any kind of withdrawal. Instead, I mostly feel relief. Freedom. I love going places where I can't use my phone - it's so liberating.

So I've been thinking of it more like a compulsion. If my phone is present, I pick it up without even thinking about it. I don't decide to look at my phone, I just find myself doing it, compulsively. If it's not there, I'm free. Sometimes, I don't even miss it at all.

That's why I loved this article about a Jack White concert where people were barred from using their phones in the concert hall.

First of all, the solution to cut people off from their phones was so elegant: each person's phone went into a neoprene pouch that was locked. They kept the pouch and if they ever needed to use their phone, they simply stepped out into the hallway where it could be unlocked, used, and then locked away before re-entering the concert itself.

What a simple solution to remove phones without actually taking them away from people!

While I know that taking photos has been linked with people actually enjoying an experience more, I also know the feeling of wanting to get the best shot of the band I'm seeing: reaching for my phone with a level of franticness with each cool new lighting effect, wondering if somehow this time my plastic rectangle will be able to capture the effect even though every other photo was sub-par.

This kind of photo-taking is part of an overall attempt to optimize everything about an experience that is just exhausting. It's like watching a movie with the person who won't stop fiddling with the sound balance on the TV. At some point, their attempt to make things better is just ruining it. Sit down, watch the movie. Stand there, watch the band.

Of course, the photo-taking isn't really the main problem. The problem is that when you take out your phone to take a photo, you think about where you might post it. You scroll back through and evaluate the quality of your photos, wondering if a different angle would be better. You see that your friend texted and reply. You compulsively open Facebook or Instagram or a news app or your email, not because you chose to, but simply because that's what your hands do when they are holding your phone.

If this only happened in concerts that would be one thing. It happens in life. For me, it's especially a problem when I am only loosely engaged in a thing I'm doing. When I am spending quality time with friends, for example, my phone is almost always out of sight. When I am at work, however, it is right next to me and I pick it up every single time my mind wanders, without even thinking about it.

So here is my challenge to myself: inspired by Jack White, I am going to find ways to make it just a little bit harder to use my phone.

Possible methods include leaving it in my jacket or purse (instead of on the desk next to me) and keeping my phone charger in a different room from where I am working.

Honestly, I only expect this to last for so long, but I am really interested to see how often I decide it's worth it to walk over to my jacket and get my phone out of my pocket. I am also interested to see what I do when my mind wanders instead of looking at my phone.

Let the phone-avoidance challenge begin!

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Here's Something to Try: A To-Don't List

Try writing a to don't list instead of just a to do list.

Photo by Jose Aragones.

I am intrigued by this concept: in addition to making a to-do list, why not make a to-don't list of all the things you don't want to do that day.

This might be habits you're trying to break, like smoke or cuss or eat junk food. Or it could be identifying your most common procrastination voids and declaring that you will not stroll mindlessly into them.

What I like about this idea is that it forces you not only to consider what you want to do with your day (and by extension, your life) but also to look at the obstacles that frequently get in your way: if you want to go to bed early, but find you usually watch one too many episodes The Good Place or lose track of time while texting and scrolling on your phone, make that a to don't!

(Okay, I know there is no such thing as too many episodes of The Good Place, but we're dealing with finite time and a need to do a few other things with our lives, so let's just accept the fact that we can't spend all our time watching The Good Place and doing nothing else.)

Phrase it in whatever way will be most impactful for you: I will not scroll on Instagram past 9pm; I will not watch more than two episodes; I will not worry about what I'm missing on the internet after 9pm because I know there is actually nothing.

As I write this, I am realizing two things:

One: that we're going to want to have something in the to-do column to help us when the habit strikes. If I always lie on the couch with my phone for indeterminate amounts of time in the evening, I'm going to be hard pressed for ideas of other things to do when 9pm rolls around and I said I would stop. Best to think of some ideas of what I could be doing with that time instead. (Read a book? Do yoga? Do the unthinkable and talk to someone on the phone? I've heard other people like to take baths in the evening, so maybe that?)

Two: The phrasing of "Today I Will Not" for the to-don't list made me realize that it would be awesome to write "Today I Will" for my daily to-do lists instead of just "to do." It just feels better. More intentional. I think I will approach what I write on the list a little differently if I do this.

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Challenge Accepted: Will Keeping a Commonplace Book Transform My Life?

Keeping a commonplace book seems to be another version of bullet journalling.

Photo by Joao Silas.

Have you ever heard of a commonplace book? If so, you're probably a person who knows a lot about history and I envy you. I just learned about them, and it looks to me like they are the 1800's version of a bullet journal, except not. Maybe keeping one will save you. I'm going to try keeping one and let you know if it becomes a thing that saves me.

Here's how one might describe a commonplace book: the "thinker's journal"; a collection of musings, quotes, and notes from interesting events; a reference guide to things that have inspired you; recollections on the human condition; a collection of wisdom to muse over later.

In its most basic form, a commonplace book is an index to wisdom, musings, quotes, and thoughts that have inspired you.

A copy of a 17th century commonplace book.

A 17th Century commonplace book containing poems and recipes. CC.

Given that, as far as I understand it, back in the day these were used in concert with a version of journalling where people would use brief notations to record things like the weather, major events of the day, and maybe even what they ate, this combo is basically a bullet journal, is it not? Given how people like to use them to chart their habits, behaviour, and moods as well as record inspirations and other fancy thoughts? It's a nice, structured way to reflect on life that (theoretically) doesn't take too much time.

The problem with bullet journals is that they have become very artistic and intimidating. People create works of art in their bullet journals, and while that is neat, it is also overwhelming for some of us. While it's true that the original bullet journal is nothing like that, it still feels like your bullet journal has to be all fancypants to count these days.

Right now, I have a notebook where I write everything down and it basically serves the function of a commonplace book and bullet journal and... whatever else. I jot down staff meeting notes, to do lists, notes from lectures, and whatever else I need to write down. For a while, I was doing more straightforward journalling in it as well, but that just takes too much time and I never stick with it.

So what will change?

Through the magical powers of intentionality, I will (hopefully) do two things with my commonplace book:

1) Transform my catch-all notebook into something that can be more of an effective resource - where various quotes, musings, and ideas can be more easily referenced and used on top of my to do lists and other random life notes.

2) Create more space for creative and deep thinking that doesn't take up a ton of time or rudely interfere with life.

I will keep you posted on how I decide to format the thing, and how it progresses!

Commonplace book resources: Critical Margins, Psychology Today, Thought Catalogue.

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Challenge Accepted: 10 Whole Minutes Alone With My Thoughts

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz.

Speaking of morning routines, for the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to work a new element into my morning routine. (Yep, maybe I should start sharing my sweet morning routine for y'all to follow!)

The new thing is to spend a mere 10 minutes just sitting, alone with my thoughts.

I have my notebook out and sometimes journal a bit. Or I just sit there and think about things. Either way, it is quiet and I am quiet. There is a timer to let me know when 10 minutes is up so that I don't check my clock the whole time.

What's the point?

I am not very good at being alone with my thoughts. I put on the radio, music, podcasts, Netflix, basically anything that adds another voice to my brain.

Being alone with your thoughts is important. It allows them to grow, change, multiply, or fade away, as needed. It lets you actually think them.

I want to teach myself that I don't need to be afraid of being alone with my thoughts anymore. I am pretty sure I learned to avoid it when I was living with depression; when being alone with my thoughts was actually a little bit dangerous. It's not anymore.

Also, it's a bit relaxing. It's a mini-reset before the day starts.

The hardest part is starting. Turning off the radio, pausing the podcast, putting down the book, and/or setting aside my phone is the biggest struggle of this whole thing. It's like taking away my security blanket. I know I'll be okay without it, but I don't want to be without it. Also, what if I am not okay this time? What if something horrible happens?

I often have a weird FOMO-like feeling when I go to turn off whatever I am listening to, which is usually something pre-recorded. I feel like I am going to miss out on something in a recording that I have paused and will start up again in 10 minutes. There is no logic to it. And yet. The mind resists.

So it's a practice that's good for me, but that I am struggling with. Maybe I always will?

How is your relationship with your thoughts? Are you totally comfortable being alone together, or do you need to manufacture opportunities like me?

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The No Day But Today Challenge - An Update

A little over a month ago, I watched the musical RENT and was inspired to live my life with a little more urgency. I decided to remind myself that each day might be my last by writing "NO DAY BUT TODAY" in my notebook every morning for a month and see if that changed how I approached life.

Well? How did I do?

This is how I did:

I did it nine times. Nine. Out of thirty. They weren't even consecutive, because I forgot some days. Then I completely forgot this challenge even existed.

I'm not sure why my brain completely erased this challenge from my consciousness, but it definitely did.

So, what now? I do think that writing it down, on the days I did, helped keep this mantra in my mind and heart. But I don't think that setting myself up for failure by trying to do this again is that smart. Instead, how about leaning into a classic: a sticky note on the bathroom mirror. One and done.

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Challenge Accepted: No Day But Today

Source: Giphy

I just saw my friend perform in a local production of RENT.

You know RENT, right? The musical about a bunch of New York artists who range from poor to actually homeless, trying to get by, dream big, and change the world while surviving AIDS?

It had been a while since I really paid attention to this musical. The movie version came out while I was in university and we all became rightly obsessed with it, and then moved on with our lives. Since then, I decided that the general premise that these artists were being oppressed because they had to pay rent was silly and that the musical as a whole was a little too, shall we say, mush-hearted. A weird thing for me, the mushiest-of-hearted people to think, but there it is.

As much as the story's basic focus on love above all else and plea to live for the moment while rejecting capitalist douchefaces is still very close to my heart, it was associated with the bubble of university, when we all thought that learning how to breathe all the way down to our genitals would somehow save the world.

So I was a little surprised that I basically wept through the entire show.

A LITTLE surprised - I cry super easily, so it's not a huge surprise when anything makes me cry, but this in particular was a touch surprising, just because I thought I had cynicked beyond it.

There is a lot in there that will always bring a tear or two out of my face: love above all else, devoting yourself to your ideals, taking care of your chosen family, reminders that, someday, we will lose everyone we love.

But this is what really got me: the "no day but today" mantra. It comes up over and over again through the show. It hit me hard.

I am not sure how my life would change if I really did embrace each day as my chance to act on the love, life, and ideals in my heart, but I am going to do an experiment.

For the next month, every single morning I am going to remind myself of this by writing the words "NO DAY BUT TODAY" in a notebook. I may journal a bit about what it means to me that day, or I may just write that and move on. Who knows. I will do it by hand, and I will do it for a month. Starting last Sunday.

I will report back.

Source: Giphy

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Staring into the unknown, day one

Photo by Jordan Sanchez via Unsplash.

A year ago, I tried something new: I started taking antidepressants. They made an almost immediate difference for me in my mood and energy levels.

Today is the day that I try another new thing. Today I stop taking them.

The time is right. The circumstances that caused me to need them in the first place have all changed and I have gotten better at taking care of myself. I was never supposed to stay on the pills indefinitely.

I'm kind of nervous. Nobody really knows what I should expect. My doctor and my counsellor both said the same thing: physical symptoms can have a huge range, and nobody knows how my body will react until it does. I just need to give myself the space to experience some things and see how it goes.

Because people are bizarre creatures, I have been sent many articles about the horrors of withdrawal from antidepressants, as well as permanent brain damage some people have experienced, so I am fully aware of the worst end of the spectrum. (Why people think it's necessary to send a friend who is already on antidepressants articles about how going off them will ruin their life, I don't know.) My hope is that since I experienced very few symptoms going on the drugs, I won't experience many going off.

But now all I can do is stare into the great unknown and wait for it to hit me. Theoretically, I have the strength to deal with it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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Challenge Accepted (and then rejected): monitoring my phone use with Quality Time

Photo by Jeanne Menjoulet. CC.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about this great new app she found called Quality Time. It tracks your phone use and then tells you how you're wasting your life.

So obviously, I downloaded it. After all, I want to engage in more quality time, and I KNOW that involves using my phone less. Distractions are bad for the brain, the light is killing sleep, etc etc etc.

I planned to monitor my use for a week and then try to set some goals to reduce my usage, but then every time I opened the app to see what my usage was, my brain failed to jump to attention.

So far this week I have unlocked my phone 363 times and opened Instagram 116 times, my podcast app 86 times, and Facebook 55 times.

Meh? I guess maybe that's bad? I mean, I obviously open Instagram a lot, but is that automatically a problem? Sure, there is some solid research that it makes people unhappy, but I am cocky and don't think that applies to me.

I looked at my numbers and thought, you know what? I just don't really care, because I don't think my phone interferes that much with my life. I still have human social interactions on the regular, I still do my job, I still read books (although the book-reading does take more intentional effort now with my phone hanging around all the time, so that is a thing). I'm just not that worried about it.

So the question is: does this mean I'm in some state of zen and healthy balance when it comes to phone use, or does it mean that I am so addicted I can't even bear to monitor it?

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