The Receptionist

The Four Time Horizons and How We Spend Our Lives

A photo over the ocean, the water is choppy with a flat horizon and the full moon is visible even though it's daytime.

Why do we do things?

There are a lot of reasons, but usually, it boils down to us thinking that whatever we are doing will bring some improvement to our lives, perhaps just for the moment or perhaps in the long term.

Enter the four time horizons: a way of looking at the impact of an activity or choice today, tomorrow, and through the rest of our lives. I found this really helpful to clarify my desires as I considered various habits I am want to incorporate or increase in my life. It could also be used to consider the impact of less-desired habits or activities.

Today: The immediate impact of the decision or action.

- Moving my body today improves my mood and focus, makes my body feel more alive.

- Meditating today makes me feel calm and connected to the moment.

- Writing today gets me one step closer to finishing a project, gets a blog post out, or helps me sort through my thoughts.

Day-to-day: The way the activity impacts my life in a current, but ongoing way.

- Moving regularly means I can say yes to a hike with a friend, move a couch without worry, and feel more comfortable in my body in general.

- Meditating regularly means I am better able to recognize my emotions when they arise or re-ground myself when anxiety flares up.

- Writing regularly means I make continual progress on projects and my desired identity as a writer is matched by my actions.

The Unexpected: How does this decision impact unexpected situations that may arise?

- Moving regularly lets me recover more easily from injury or sprint to the grocery store before closing when I've run out of ice cream.

- Meditating regularly means that when an emotional upheaval occurs I already have a practice to help carry me through.

- Writing regularly allows me to have something in progress (or even finished!) if I ever happen to meet a publisher or editor who says the magic words, "send me some of your writing."

My Final Years: What impact does this activity have in my final years of life?

- Moving through my life means I will be more likely to be able to go to the toilet by myself, walk with balance, and stay independent.

- Meditating through my life will lend to mental and spiritual health in old age, feeling calmer and more able to accept circumstances that arise. Maybe I'll have more wisdom to share.

- Writing through my life will create a giant body of work, a way to communicate even if my body falls apart, an ongoing connection to my imagination.

Going through this exercise reminds me of the Annie Dillard quote:

"How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing."

(I came across this concept from The Workout Today newsletter (I've referenced its lessons before), and the benefits of moving were lifted directly from them!)

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A Crumpled Collage by Paulina Alonso

Oh me oh my.

Paulina Alonso's collage work is simple but so fascinating.

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A post shared by Paulina Alonso (@rojoypunto)

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On the Preciousness of Being Ordinary

A photo of a dishrack with colourful ceramic plates lined up in it. The colours are slightly muted, so it's not super cheery.

Tracey Hocking.

“Ordinary isn’t the enemy but instead something nourishing and unavoidable, the bedrock upon which the rest of experience ebbs and flows. Embrace this — the warm water, the pruned hands, the prismatic gleam of the bubbles and the steady passage from dish to dish to dish — and feel, however briefly, the breath of actual time, a reality that lies dormant and plausible under all the clutter we pile on top of it. A bird makes its indecipherable call to another bird, a song from a passing car warps in the Doppler effect and I’m reminded, if only for a moment, that I need a lot less than I think I do and that I don’t have to leave my kitchen to get it.”
– Mike Powell, An Ode to Washing the Dishes

I remember, as a teenager, making dramatic declarations about how I could not possibly do something "normal" or "boring" or "ordinary" with my life. My mom, in all her wisdom, would point out to me that most people had regular lives and that was a good thing - the world doesn't need us all to be big and flashy and impressive. It needs us to contribute on the ground.

Of course, at the time I would say that sure, that may be what the world needs, but some of us get to be extraordinary and that's what I needed to be. I was desperate to be lifted up onto some kind of pedestal of specialness, which of course, was only because at my deepest core, I hated myself and craved mountains of external affirmation to balance it out.

Now that I've learned to like myself, I have a deepening appreciation for the ordinary, as Mike Powell puts it, as "something nourishing and unavoidable, the bedrock upon which the rest of experience ebbs and flows."

How comforting.

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How to Tell Your Boundaries Aren't Being Respected

A photo of two signs, one in front of the other, both say "No Trespassing" on them. They are bright yellow, hanging underneath a bridge or boardwalk.

Michael Dzeidzic

I have always struggled with having boundaries.

Once, I was talking to my counsellor about an issue I was having with a person and she said, "that's a great place to put up a boundary," in a sort of off-hand way. I don't know what my face was doing, but when she looked at me she actually laughed, realizing I had NO CLUE how to do that or what it really meant.

After that, I began to dip my toe into the world of boundaries by looking at them through the lens of prioritizing the people and things that mattered rather than fencing out the things that didn't.

It turns out, however, that establishing boundaries isn't just something you do once and then you're good! (Why am I always surprised when my self-care isn't "set it up and then clap your hands and walk away"?) So I've really enjoyed this list by Anne Write of 15 Signs Your Boundaries Need Work to help me recognize when I've started letting my people-pleasings-anti-conflict-here-let-me-help-I-can't-be-alone-with-my-thoughts tendencies take over.

The list includes the usual suspects like resentment, dread, exhaustion, anger, and feeling like you "just can't". But there was one I hadn't considered before: feeling hurt, but with no real sense of why or how it happened.

That's interesting, isn't it?

Honestly, I always assumed that whenever I walked away from an interaction with a friend feeling inexplicably bad, it was just my depression doing its thing. (Sometimes, it shrinks down real small while I'm busy or with people, and then the very INSTANT that distraction goes away, POP! It expands to fill all my brain-space.)

I will bet, however, that some of those times, I was feeling the sting of my boundaries being ignored. How INTERESTING you guys! It's a whole new face to my self-analysis prism, what FUN!!!

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Lest We Forget

David Clode

As a pacifist, I have often had a complicated relationship with Remembrance Day.

I certainly respect the people who gave and risked and lost their lives to stand for what they believed in--even if I disagree with the premise of what was happening (war), that's an honourable thing to do. I also realize that there are things worse than violence and that sometimes, fighting may be necessary to prevent a greater evil.

Yet, sometimes the proceedings can feel a little like they glorify war, which I am not really comfortable with, either. I mean, I'm not surprised that the people leading Remembrance Day ceremonies aren't critically engaging with the question of why we fight in the first place or mourning that the soldiers had to be soldiers in the first place, but I guess a girl can dream.

Either way, I've felt like my pacifist values needed constant reconciliation with the day.

This year, however, I came across a tweet that helped me bring all that together. Unfortunately, I didn't save the tweet and I can't find it now, so you'll have to deal with my uncredited paraphrase:

The best way to honour those who died in wars in the past is to ensure we never ask anyone to die in another war, ever again.

I love that.

It grieves the lives lost without glorifying the context in which they were taken. It also drives us towards becoming the peacekeepers we (we being Canadians) pretend to be on the world stage. After all, I have a hard time believing that "lest we forget" was intended to be something we keep saying to remember new wars.

So let's remember those who died and honour their sacrifice.

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Asiko's Portraits Will Wound You, and You'll Like It

I went to Àsìkò's website because I saw a post of some stunning, renaissance-inspired images he created posted on Twitter. Then I saw these beauties. Wowwwwwwww.

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A post shared by asiko (@asiko_artist) on May 22, 2017 at 7:02am PDT

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A post shared by asiko (@asiko_artist) on Jan 21, 2019 at 7:00am PST

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Spellchecking Pluralism

Deborah Roberts' image series called Pluralism is a simple, yet evocative, demonstration of one way white supremacy makes people of non-European descent into the other: which names spellchecker knows and which are seen as misspelled words.

This image contains various typed names like Jenise or Niakya, each one of them has the little red line underneath it that word processors use to show the word is misspelled.

This image contains names like Inetha and Quonish, it is printed to look like it is a photocopy of an old book (faded a little in the middle) and names are circled, underlined, crossed out, or otherwise "corrected" in red.

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IT'S NOT EVEN MY COUNTRY WHY AM I CRYING???

I am crying.

I am crying because FINALLY the terrible, racist, sexist, wannabe-fascist is going to lose his job.

I am crying because everyone is so excited to just go back to a normal level of disappointment in political leaders.

I am crying because a woman of colour has been elected Vice President of the country that everyone says is the most powerful country in the world. (Is it really still? I don't know.)

I am crying because a woman DIDN'T get elected President of that same country four years ago basically because she is a woman.

I am crying because I keep seeing tweets about whole neighbourhoods bursting into cheers in the States and that's so beautiful.

I am crying because the bar was so very low and it almost wasn't met.

I am crying because there are so many memes right now about people coming together to fight evil that are kind of silly but also beautiful.

I am crying because I didn't sleep very much last night.

I am crying because I am scared what the armed civilian militia (read: terrorists) might do in reaction to this.

I am crying because Joe Biden, from what I can tell, is pretty much fine but has been cast as saviour.

I am crying because people are saying, "well done, America" when it was fractions of percent of the vote that ultimately decided and is that America doing well?

I am crying because I am not sure if the world will ultimately get better but also because now it might not get worse.

I am crying because I didn't really have hope but the good thing happened anyway.

An animated gif of Kamala Harris at a rally saying "Obviously, dude's gotta go."

Giphy

An animated gif of Kamala Harris saying "we will get the job done."

Giphy

An animated gif of Kamala Harris saying "thank you"

Giphy

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Turns Out I'm Past My Prime (Cognitively Speaking)

A photo of a few pineapples wearing party hats, one is tipped over and there is confetti.

Pineapple Supply Co.

Turns out that my last birthday was a big milestone and I didn't even know it: I was exiting my cognitive peak.

A new study shows that our brains reach their "cognitive peak" at age 35. Downhill from there.

What would I have done differently, had I known I was in my peak year last year? Honestly, probably not much, except that I would have also made a lot of jokes about how I was the smartest I would ever be. (So my friends are probably grateful I didn't know!)

Other fun research:

You can measure ongoing/chronic stress levels using your earwax.

If you want to feel good about yourself and build efficacy, you should do the hardest thing first. Contrary to popular belief, we do worse when we start with something easy and build our way up to the hard thing.

If you can get someone to question their prejudice about one group, it will actually help reduce their prejudice against other groups.

Bad news for me: depression and social anxiety symptoms are associated with use of dating apps in women. (Insert teeth-gritting/brace yourself emoji here.) This is correlation, not causation, but I can certainly tell you that I don't feel like my best self after a round of swiping.

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What I Thought I Wanted

Funny how, in retrospect, we can easily see that what we thought we wanted wasn't really what we wanted for our lives, and yet we still want the things we want now so so so much. (Or is it just me?)

(Image from Positive Vibe Tribe via Swiss Miss.)

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What Do You Need to Feel Like Yourself?

A photo of a woman holding a magnifying glass in front of her face, so her eyes and nose are magnified larger than the rest of her. The overall vibe is fun and playful.

Photo by Marten Newhall.

A friend of mine asked this question recently:

What do you need in your life to feel like yourself?

I didn't have a good answer at the moment and so the question has stuck with me.

There has been a time in life when I very noticeably flipped from not feeling like myself to feeling like myself and it was when I went on antidepressants.

I generally described the shift as feeling like I had energy again - like I was no longer carrying a heavy, floppy weight that sapped all my strength and attention and feelings. I was actually able to not only do things, but to enjoy them.

So is that it? Is feeling like yourself just having the energy to do things? Perhaps things that you enjoy or that you have pinned your identity to?

Because the next step in this analysis is to get lost in a maze of questions of identity and what even is that in the first place and what makes me me and do any of us really know ourselves and wait a second, do I have to know who I am in order to feel like myself?

(My answer to that last question is no. No, I do not. In fact, it can go in reverse! I can follow the feeling to discover more about who I am: what activities or circumstances give me that sense of, "Oh, this is where I belong/this fits/this feels like me"?)

So when do I feel most like myself?

I feel most like myself while engaging in creative activities. While with people I love, especially if we are being goofy or cuddling or having an intense, revelatory conversation. While planning things (I know, it's dorky but it's true). While dancing or walking or stretching otherwise using my body.

In a general sense, I feel like myself while doing things instead of not doing things. They don't have to be fancy or meaningful or particularly special things, it's just being up and engage instead of, well, the opposite. At the end of an evening puttering around the apartment with the TV on in the background, I'll feel more like myself than if I give in to the allure of the couch and enter sloth-mode for the night.

Which brings us back to my antidepressant-fueled realization: energy. All of this is moot if I don't have the energy or desire or ability to do the things that make me feel like me. Sometimes that energy comes from an antidepressant, sometimes it comes from a good night's sleep, and sometimes it comes from a mental pep talk and forcing yourself to start. Without it, however, it's just an exhausting slog through a bog in the fog.

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Aakash Nihalani: Artist or Portal-Keeper?

I am pretty sure artist Aakash Nihalani, who says he uses tape and paint and corrugated board to create his optical illusions, is actual the master of several portals into alternate dimensions.

A photo of a public artwork - on a white wall, tape has been used to create an outline creating an optical illusion to look like a piece of the wall rotated inward and opened, like a window.

A photo where two men are standing, wearing white t-shirts, and there is an optical illusion that makes it look like a neon green L-shaped thing is going through both of their chests. (It looks cool, not gruesome.)

A photo of an old, abandoned cabin in the woods. There is a line of white cubes with bright pink outlines that appear to be going through the cabin's window and off into the air at a diagonal.

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To Answer Your Question, No, We Are Not Okay

I saw this on Twitter recently.

are white women ok lol pic.twitter.com/H8e1d4Ktyh
— stephanie (@isosteph) October 26, 2020

To answer her question... no, no I don't think that we are. On so many levels.

First of all, we are humans. Are humans okay? We don't seem to be doing very well.

Second, the person described here has postpartum depression. Many humans experience some version of depression which is both okay (because I don't know, I seem fine with it for my entire life) and also very much not okay (what is broken that so many of us live like this?). From what I have witnessed, postpartum depression is a particularly brutal experience, what with all the exhaustion and babies to keep alive and feeling all alone.

But more to the point of the section she highlighted, let's use a Venn diagram.

On one side are the white women who are aware of our role in supporting a white, hetero-patriarchy, hate it, don't know what to do about it, and are too scared to really go there. These women are constantly guilty and would fully feel absolutely wracked about adding another white man to humanity. Not okay.

On the other side are the white women who think there's nothing wrong with our role in supporting the white, hetero-patriarchy. They may feel fine or they may feel very angry (at all that political correctness ruining their white son's futures) but either way, they are really not okay either.

In the overlap are the white women who are aware of everything we have done to hurt humanity, doing what they can within their sphere of influence to change it, and while they sometimes feel a terrible weight of guilt, they also feel free to experience joy and love and raise their little white sons as best they can, should reproducing be a thing for them. They are okay.

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