LifePundit

How to Increase Writing Productivity

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One reason I've really enjoyed The Biggest Loser is because I'm part of a team and I've made a commitment to show up. Nothing too remarkable about that while you have it and it's working for you. A really big deal, though, when you don't have it and you need it.

So somebody challenged me to use those same principles in my novel writing. Get a team going and make sure that I show up. Believe it or not, I've figured out a way.

Here's how it works: you probably forgot (and maybe I never wrote about) my accountability partner, a freelance writer who lives in the country in circumstances similar to mine out in Oklahoma. For two years this coming January, she and I have e-mailed each other every morning with our plans and goals for the workday, primarily to hold each other accountable in our fiction writing. We've only spoken twice and have never met, yet we know almost everything about each other and have become close friends. I think she has seen my photo but I've never seen hers. 

So we've tried a daring experiment. We have an appointed time every morning, which we call our Sacred Time, when we show up at our desks and do nothing but write fiction. Together. Usually with our cats. Except we've entered a strange new level: we have Skype video calls going while we writ. Yes, she can see me working and I can see her working, and nobody better get up from that chair until our two hours are over. (Though sometimes we have to excuse ourselves to let the cats in and out. That's the only allowed excuse. That and answering the door for people bringing checks, which has only happened once and unfortunately it wasn't for me.)

It felt very awkward at first. We don't talk to each other, we e-mail. So we didn't really know how to carry on a conversation, made worse by the fact that talking on Skype is like talking on a walkie-talkie. We've almost started to end our sentences with radio jargon so the other person will know it's okay to talk, but we don't know radio jargon.

I no longer feel like I'm here working by myself (unless you count the cat). Somebody notices if I goof off or my butt doesn't stay in chair, and I'm really enjoying the silent companionship. At the end of the session we tell how many words we have written and whether it was easy or hard.

Sometimes we'll follow up with an e-mail, which is useful because we now use our regular e-mails to each other as ways to answer our own questions by writing them down. I've learned so much from her and rely on her to help prop me up when I need propping, and I hope I do the same for her.

Everywhere I Look, There's a Waist

A little more than a month to go in my gym's Biggest Loser competition, and I saw something today I haven't seen before:

My teammates all have waists! They didn't have them last week. And they're wearing skimpier (but not skimpy) clothing, as if they no longer need to hide under baggy stuff.

Very exciting. 

I have yet to watch the Biggest Loser on TV. It couldn't possibly be as good as seeing women I've come to know doing their best and getting results. I think we should all go bench press a Volkswagen to celebrate. Then have a cookie.

Physical Therapy and Immortality

If only he worked out more, my father would live forever. He believes this and he's about to prove it. He'll be 96 one month from today and he's passed his doctor's generous predictions for his longevity, given his aortic stenosis and congestive heart failure, by one year.

So my father's given up on working out in his room with his dumb bells and he's going back to physical therapy at the assisted living place where he lives. He says he can tell that it's helping him. He's stronger and feels better.

He's still on oxygen, still struggling to stay vertical, still hits the floor about once a week. I think the floor is starting to complain.

I told this story about my father's return to physical therapy and his improvement to my husband, Paul, who's been such a wonderful support during my father's brinkmanship with death over the last couple of years.

"That's great he's working out," said Paul, who's 51. "When I move up there to the nursing home, I'll join him."

I thought this was funny, so I told Saintly Brother. He said, "The difference is our father can run on fumes; Paul can't."

It's a wondrous thing what the human will can overcome.

I Live in Fairyland

Spring is my favorite time of year, even with the pollen. I live in fairyland, with azaleas, such as those pictured, turning the landscape into vivid, unashamed and gaudy colors. They're ugly bushes the rest of the year but that's a small price to pay. If you've seen The Masters Golf Course on TV, that's how my town looks. Only without the careful grooming or any ticket prices. There's not a mansion or a house trailer that isn't banked with azaleas in bloom.

It makes me happy just to be here. After I dropped Lily off at school today I took a detour on the way to the gym, driving through the in-town neighborhood where I grew up and my parents' former home sits for sale (still -- a flipper bought it). Mama's azaleas and camellias were in bloom and if I had been on my way straight home I would have picked a couple.

I even like the heavy dusting of yellow pine tree pollen, especially when it blows in stunning clouds of yellow from the pine trees. It gets everywhere. I'll find it under my car hood in December. The pollen won't let you escape the fact that NOW is a different time of year. Pay attention!

This is the time of year when everything seems possible. You want to plant flowers, because you forget how hot it gets in the summer and how fast the weeds grow and how you forgot to water them last July during the drought and they all died. You forget your failures this time of year, and plant again.

And maybe that is the true reality. Anything is possible. Plant, hope and don't forget to water.

What to do When You Can't Sleep

Can't sleep? Here's the best thing in the world for putting yourself to sleep when you've got insomnia, or perhaps monsters sitting on your chest. A friend gave me a great technique for when you're brain won't shut down at night time. Give it a job. The best job in the world.

Pray for your friends in alphabetical order (I'm usually asleep before I make it to Zan -- so sorry). Don't obsess over who you put in and who you leave out. Just open your heart and call their images and concerns to mind. Not much to mind, but brush past them and offer them up to God. Offer everything up to God. Let go. Pray. Touch your friends.

You'll be asleep by "H."

So glad my name starts with "A."

Something in me feels like this isn't quite right. I'm using prayer as a sleep aid.

God's always glad to hear from me. And if my child was tense and anxious and couldn't sleep and was nestled in my arms, I'd relish hearing her offer up the names of the people she loved, holding them up to their Creator in love and, yes, sleepiness.

One way we'd put Lily to sleep was to read her the book, Goodnight Moon. But now I've found that it's hazardous to our children's health. Read this very funny opinion in The New York Times here.

Preparation for Lent

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. Lent begins.

Some people give up things for Lent, such as chocolate or alcohol. One year I gave up "loose bread," which was defined as any bread that wasn't a part of something, such as a sandwich. Loose bread is good. Then there's always the child who gives up peas or beets.

This year I'm giving up worry and sadness. With a God who loves me, shouldn't I be living in joy?

Jesus was fully human. That meant he was familiar with worry and sadness. And there's that shortest verse in the bible, "Jesus wept." So worry and sadness aren't something to be cast aside for good because they are part of the deal with being human. But for 40 days, I'm going to be reaching for joy.

I'm getting ahead of myself here. Ever since I took that Defeating Your Self-Defeating Behaviors class, I've been reflecting on the ways I'd like to live my life differently. I'd like to make living differently a habit, so that living differently is the way I live. It takes 37 days to change a habit, so I'm going to use Lent, which is 40 days, as my framework. To stay on track, I will journal every day. Don't worry. I won't do it here.

I've always shied away from using Lent as an excuse to prove that something isn't a problem or to change something that is. That's not about giving to God. That's about giving to Anne. I've known alcoholics who gave up drinking for Lent as a way to prove to themselves that they weren't alcoholics. If they make it for 40 days, they can go back to their drinking and feel okay, they've proved they don't have a problem.

I shy away from fasting because I'm afraid my motive would not be to get closer to God, but to lose 10 pounds.

So I've had to do a lot of thinking about how to make Lent a spiritual season for me while trying to accomplish goals. And you know what? For once, I believe that changing my life in ways that are surely more pleasing to God and make me a joyful Christian will make Lent a deeply spiritual season for me.

Others may mark the Lenten season by giving up something, paying attention, studying and praying or choosing a service, such as making regular visits to prisons, nursing homes or other places where people live and are forgotten.

Even if you aren't Christian, a season of reflection can be of benefit. I look outside at the resting, winter world. Though most things look dead or dormant, there are things going on beneath the surface. Nature is preparing for spring.

When it arrives, I pray that we'll all be blooming with joy and expectation, too.

Life-Changing Discovery (If I Can Only Remember It)

I have been chasing my tail for several years now. And this week, I finally caught it.

The catalyst is that writer's course I'm taking (online) on Defeating Your Self-Defeating Behaviors. You have to understand that I am the very definition of Self-Defeating Behaviors. I can read a diet book and eat a brownie at the same time. Buy expensive software and office supplies to track finances in order to save money. Call somebody to tell them I can't do whatever thing they have asked me only to hear myself not only say yes, but offer to be in charge.

And I have never finished a "to do" list in my life. If I hadn't lost it in the mess, I'd probably be working on the "to do" list I started in eighth grade.

Guess what? I can't get it all done because nobody could. My list is too long.

I thought I was smarter, faster, stronger, smellier or whatever and that meant that I really could Do It All. And, to make matters worse, Sometimes I did, validating my self-defeating behavior.

Today I was a failure. I made a list and exchanged it with my new friend and accountability partner who I know very little about (but she's a great accountability partner), and when I send in tomorrow's list and an accounting of today, I'll have to confess: I failed.

Oh, there are a couple of ticky marks on the list where I can cross out things like "Ate three meals," "Killed no one, even if they deserved it," and "Got dressed," but that's about the extent of it. I did not cure cancer, write my novel, finish two projects or the rest of the things on the list.

Today I had a meeting with the my father and the social worker at my mother's nursing home. I got to hear things I wish weren't true. Nothing much has changed. Mama's actually in excellent health, just bedridden and in the late stages of Alzheimer's. The nursing home people are wonderful. And while this has all become routine, deep down, there is nothing routine about it. My parents are running out of time.

The meeting, the visit, the errands for my father, took up a chunk of the morning and kept me busy until it was time to pick Lily up from school. She found me asleep in the car in the school parking lot. And when I got home, I couldn't do anything that requires much more than a brain powered by a 40-watt bulb.

After feeling just awful about this and being certain I would never be rid of my self-defeating behaviors, I had a reckoning: Maybe I shouldn't plan quite so much on days when I get to hear, see and experience the dying of my parents' lights.

I forgive me. I did all that today needed.

You Have to Pay to Live

Paul has been bugging me to attend Sandler's Goals 2008 workshop, which was this morning. One of the problems with being a freelance writer and working at home is that your work expands to fill all your hours. When you add having aging parents who need visiting, if nothing else, and a child who needs picking up from school and getting driven to lessons, etc., pretty soon there's no time for fun.

I've sort of forgotten what I do to have fun. I think my idea of having fun is to not have anything on my to-do list. Actually, blogging is fun, but it could probably be filed under procrastination, though I am making a little money and intend to make more so let's call it "work that's fun." (Nice!)

Sandler sent a pre-workshop work sheet for me to fill out. You must understand that I have been through three different household dismantlements in the last couple of years as relatives have died or moved into facilities. That's three households worth of stuff that's needed to be sorted through, divided up and given a home. Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

So, when I came to the question on the worksheet that said, "If you found out you only had six months to live, what would you do?" my answer was:

1. Get rid of all my stuff so nobody else would have to;
2. Talk to my good friends -- and to Lily -- about how she can turn to them if she needs a woman to talk to; and,
3. ...... maybe travel or do something fun. Just what is fun?

I clearly need to add some fun in my life. Paul said, "That's pathetic."

Paul is big on goals. And achievement. And rewards. "What you need to do," he said, "is come up with some goals, and when you accomplish them, you get a reward. Like, if I make my sales goals, we'll go to France this summer."

(Forget the part where he didn't ask me where I'd like to go, but that's okay. He used to live in France and hasn't been back in decades, so he's due for a trip and fine, we'll suffer and go to France with you.)

But I'm getting off track. He makes his goal, we go to France.

I like this idea. He asked me what my rewards might be. I'm getting excited. "If I accomplish X," I said, "Then I'll get to buy that little (cheap) TV table I've been looking at. And if I get on a roll and have productive week after week, I might just have a regular Friday afternoon massage."

Paul's face clouds over. "What's the matter?" I ask.

"All those cost money."

And going to France doesn't?

A friend of mines father used to have an expression that is absolutely true: "You have to pay to live." I believe it. Paul doesn't.

We went to the goal's workshop and I did not die. I have my little goals page here all written up and sitting next to my computer. Number 6 is to keep blogging (and make more money, since I have to pay to live). Number 8 is to remember to do one fun thing, just for me, once a week. And number 10 is that I get rewards when I accomplish my goals. I'm not sure that doing Number 8, doing a fun thing, is a goal that justifies a reward in that it is self-rewarding. But all the rest do!

As do the major mini-goals that I'll have to meet in order to achieve the bigger goals.

Do good stuff. Get rewards. Have more fun. 2008 is looking good.

The Gift of Today

I'm taking a wonderful on-line course on "Defeating Self-Defeating Behaviors" through WritersU, a Yahoo group. My expectations were low but this course is just what I need right now and I'm very, very glad I signed up.

One of the things Margie Lawson, the instructor, is teaching is to start out each day with positive thinking and to write down five good things about today for every today you are given.

This morning's things were heartfelt but kind of generic:

1. My family is healthy (this is no small thing -- I've learned of three other people being diagnosed with cancer in the last week);
2. I have work to do (a mixed blessing because I'd rather be working on my novel or blogging, but it's good that the world has a need for my skills and that I can earn money with them);
3. I got to take an early morning three-mile walk with a dear friend I don't see nearly enough of;
4. I believe I'm going to defeat my self-defeating behaviors, and this is exciting (procrastination, poor time management, biting off more than I can chew and not understanding why I choke), and,
5. The cold snap is over and it's going to be gorgeous and in the 70s today.

Before I met my friend for our walk, I stopped by an all-night grocery store to pick up roses and a birthday card for her, because yesterday was her birthday. When I was checking out, I was chatting with the cashier (I'm friendly -- probably too friendly because I don't get out much so I'm glad to see a human even if I'm paying them for the conversation) when a maintenance man from the city came over to bring the cashier an orange he picked on his trip to Florida over the weekend. They were small and scruffy looking -- home grown. He said they are wonderful, and I believe him. He is black. I am white. Times have thankfully changed.

And this stranger, who didn't have but about six oranges, insisted that I take one, too. I was touched by his generosity. It's tempting not to eat it, to let it sit in the fruit bowl on the table as a reminder of the kindness of strangers.

But that would be wrong. He gave it to me to eat. And I will eat it, almost like a kind of communion.

I should end the post there, on this blessing and mystery. But I came home to another mystery.

I welcome the unusual, but I'm not sure of what I think about my neighbor's black lab being tied to my fence. Who tied him there? Are they coming back for him? Do they think he's mine? Is it my neighbor's black lab, or one of the zillion around and somebody left him for me? And why oh why has he got a friend? Because if one black lab tied to your fence isn't enough, there's a second one hanging around. Both males. Neither neutered.

He is safe for now. I'll take him water if his owner doesn't turn up soon. One of the things I'm thankful for about today is that I don't own a black lab -- and I'd like to keep it that way.

Correction: Sixty Blueberry Bushes Should Do It

A few days ago I posted about how my father had ordered blueberry bushes. He's 95, has outlived his doctor's estimation of his time left by several months, and will probably outlive his doctor at this point.

He called me last night to tell me that he's expecting his blueberry bushes to arrive any day. He ordered sixty, not thirty as I previously thought. How did I ever think he could bet by with a mere 30?

He's already got a forest of producing blueberry plants. How many blueberries does a man in assisted living need?

Actually, he's planting them for us. He has some property which we will inherit. He has decided who gets which part (though it is not deeded that way) and he's planting twenty blueberry bushes for each of us on the part he thinks we should have.

I will never eat a blueberry without thinking of him, regardless of where it came from.