News and Tidbits

Hello, Readers. It’s taking a monumental amount of willpower to avoid the big, combed-over elephant in the room. The news has been riveting. But I am not writing about that. And I’m trying to marinate in it less overall. What this means is a short and scattered blog post. 

Tidbits and News:

Following my own advice from last week’s post on dealing with distraction, I have tried, somewhat successfully, to limit my exposure to the media, both formal and social, and to focus on my writing. That advice really came from the example of my friend C, mentioned last week, who has found the months since November 9th to be some of the most productive of her career. I tried to follow her example and to forge ahead. The result is that I do have a rough draft of approximately 90,000 words. All written last week. 

No, not really. That’s about 240 pages. Not possible for me to amass in one week. But the draft did start to coalesce over the last week. I read a little of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird every night to inspire me. In case anyone in the world hasn’t read that book, the title refers to advice her father gave her brother when he had a report on birds to write from scratch and it was due the next day. Take it bird by bird, was the advice, extrapolated to any writing and by larger and further effort to any daunting endeavor. Bird by bird. A way to get one’s writer self into the chair. 

Turning off the web browser is another crucial element I employed last week. 

In other news, the dog is afraid of the kitchen. I think he’s actually afraid of bees, but more specifically of things that buzz, including but not limited to bees, and by extension he is afraid of the places where things that buzz have recently been buzzing. That would be the kitchen. 

Now I’m not going to have any of that. He needs more grit, does that dog. And also he needs to be reprogrammed to like the kitchen again. I am hopeful that a little play therapy with him in the kitchen every day will work magic. I started out with one of the puzzles I bought him during a phase when I felt extremely guilty for his under stimulating life. And he does love the puzzles, which he solves with nose and paws, and which reward him with treats. 

Anxious dog

The college student is home for the summer! I picked her up on Saturday at noon, and I am happy to report that she was all packed up and ready to load the car. This kid is no snowflake. This kid has grit. What she doesn’t have is a job. She thought she had one, but it fell through. So she has been looking, along with every other recently arrived home college student who didn’t get a job over spring break. Which she did. But I guess not really. 

I read Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, and I liked it. I didn't love or lurv it, but I did like it. I liked its Buddhist elements, such as how life is full of suffering people and how we all need to be compassionate towards one another - and towards ourselves.

That’s about all. I think all that writing while trying to avoid getting sucked all the way into the news used up my available willpower and I’m depleted. That happens with willpower. It’s something that can be strengthened, according to Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, but it also has limits. Like a muscle, it can grow stronger by use, but it can also fail from overuse. However, overuse, like a vigorous workout, will lead to strength. Unless of course you tear something. I haven’t torn anything, but I have worn out my willpower muscle. So keep me away from the cookies and the chocolate. And please consider this post a gentle limbering exercise.

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Find the Hidden Success Tip

I’m dialed up to “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrhhhhhh” on the stress meter today, Readers. Why? Well. PC Various. PC Various, as I like to say, is library lingo from back in the days when I worked for the Harvard College Library. It’s a holdover from the old cataloging system they used before switching to LC (Library of Congress) cataloging and automating. That was where I came in - applying barcodes to books while they got the automated circulation system, well, circulating. 

It was a stimulating job. I often took a snoozle over the keyboard of an afternoon. But I did get in a lot of reading. All three volumes of Bowlby on Attachment and Loss, for example. Somehow, despite my non-Protestant work ethic, the library did get online, where it remains. PC Various is a vestigial category my library friends and I toss around with one another.

And today, for no good reason at all, I have shared it with you, Readers. 

So one of the various reasons I’m stressed is that we are having a French exchange student come to stay with us for the next twelve days. Only some of us speak decent French and I’m not one of us. Zut alors! What shall we do? Keep Google Translate open on my phone at all times, for one thing.

Another reason is the salty taste I have in my mouth, which according to the interwebs could be due to post nasal drip or IMMINENT DEATH. I’m the worst kind of hypochondriac. I’m the kind that doesn’t actually ever want to go to the doctor, because if the doctor suggests some kind of test, out of an abundance of caution or to actually get to the bottom of something, I am possibly more afraid of that than IMMINENT DEATH. So now I have to get a blood test to check my thyroid. I didn’t even go to the doctor. I just called her. She hasn’t even checked my sinuses. She thinks it’s probably hormonal related to perimenopause. 

So I was right. IMMINENT DEATH.

Anyhoo, on the plus side, I made yogurt. The husband and the 9th grader got into it. We started adding things to those cunning little jars, things like maple syrup, vanilla, honey, and Ovaltine. Then they decided not to eat them. So I have to eat the sweetened ones, even though I’ve cut out a lot of sugar. Why? Why cut out sugar? Well, a couple of reasons. PC Various reasons, if I may. 

One: Goal contagion. Yes, remember Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD? Goals can actually be contagious. That’s why who you hang out with is very important, right? So in January I read in the failing NY Times about quitting sugar for a month. Then a couple of friends of mine tried it. Next thing I knew, I was trying it. And so, if you want to stay motivated to achieve some goal, find other people who are also trying to achieve it. It helps. 

Two: Willpower. I decided to try cutting out sugar for one month (except for birthdays) also because somehow the rise of Rump made me concerned about my ability to withstand, say, a long trek over the mountains to Canada to escape the Gestapo. I felt that under terrible duress, I might just collapse without my daily sugar. This seemed weak and foolish. I needed to prove I am not those things. Perhaps I have just proven that I am. Well. What can I say? 

Anyhoo, today as I opened my cunning little jar and scooped some yogurt onto my healthy mixture of cereals and nuts that I eat every morning to stave off IMMINENT DEATH, I felt a little sadness and stress in my heart over having to eat a sweetened yogurt, as if it would bring me one step closer to weakness and foolishness. 

Also on the plus side, along with that one little tip for success tucked into this strange piece of writing, I offer you another cool thing I love, that isn’t causing me stress: 

My Swedish dish cloth. 

It is biodegradable, dish-washerable, and totally adorbs. Also it works well. 

Now I must frantically try to organize my house for our French guest. 

Willpower and Success: Yom Kippur Fast

Last night both girls went to services with me and my friends. As I mentioned, I go every year. I go to a nice liberal synagogue where the rabbi is a lesbian with adopted black children and nobody talks about Zionism. It's not embarrassing to be Jewish in a place like that.

The 12th grader wanted to fast, and then the 8th grader got curious about it, too. Of course they did. They are teenaged girls. I was not planning to fast today. I haven’t fasted since high school, when dieting was a way of life anyway. I have avoided it partly because I tend to get shaky if I don’t eat; partly out of fear of triggering a dormant eating disorder; and partly because I assumed I lack the necessary self-control to make it for a day without eating, so why confirm the worst? Also, partly because I just don't care. I'm a secular agnostic atheist Jew. 

This year, though, I was thinking about fasting more seriously than I have. Someone I sort of know mentioned she likes to fast because it helps her to feel grateful for all that she has and reminds her that other people go hungry every day. Very noble. More noble than I, or at least than I intended to be.  She got me thinking, though, and then the kids were interested.

Of course the 12th grader's comment was, “I’ll sleep ’til noon and then it won’t be that hard.” So when I woke up this morning I resisted food. I didn’t even have my morning glass of water. I decided that I could make it until noon. If my kids were going to sleep away half their fasts, I could just half-fast. And I made it until noon. It really wasn’t hard, especially once I allowed myself the treat of reading Pride and Prejudice in bed, instead of going for a run/walk. Then I found some Crest white strips in the bathroom and I put them in for two hours. I meditated for awhile. 

Finally, noon arrived and I made coffee with soy milk. I ate a tiny bit of muffin, too. And then the girls woke up and proceeded not to eat. Somehow that strengthened my resolve. They both have such great willpower. The 8th grader asked me to make her a grilled cheese sandwich around 1pm; but when the 12th grader said, “Oh come on, it’s only five hours until dinner,” she thought better of it. And I thought I could wait, too. Willpower is contagious, I guess. 

I think of myself as pretty weak-willed. I’m not big into deprivation. It makes me feel so lonely.  And the specter of reviving an eating disorder does lurk. I don’t want to go there. However, it feels pretty good to be getting through this day. Unfortunately, according to what I learned at temple last night, I’m not actually fasting correctly. This involves abstaining from water, food, sex, bathing for pleasure, and sex. I realize I wrote "sex" twice. I meant to add "leather." So coffee with soy milk and tiny bit of muffin technically means I broke my fast. 

Do I care? 

Is this a spiritual lesson? I mean, I’m thinking about my diet, my waistline, what the scale might say if I actually had a scale. I’m thinking that I can probably eliminate some snacking every day. These are very self-centered thoughts. Furthermore, it's clear that the 8th grader is competing with her sister, and I don't want them to totally show me up, either. None of the three of us knows why we're suppose to avoid leather today. This seems random and nonsensical. 

But. I am learning that I can actually get past my urges and that I have more willpower than I thought. That feels good. It is useful to know that I can force myself to endure a little hardship. I now know that I could get through much worse from necessity if I can push myself through this little thing by choice. We all want to know we’re made of strong stuff, and I have suspected that I really, really ain’t. No strong stuff here. I mean, beyond enduring childhood and all that. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe I can have more confidence in my stuff. Maybe it is stronger than I thought. And I know that if others around me show their strong stuff, I can gain strength from that, too.

The 16-year-old is working on college essays on an empty stomach. The 13-year-old has just bathed - not for pleasure, I assure you, but out of necessity. She is torturing both of us by talking about grilled cheese and her “famous” (at least around our family) pesto sandwiches. I’m thinking about tuna and my mouth is filling with saliva; but we will be strong. We will make it. 

Self-Control Strategies: Distraction

Well, I am very proud of myself. I have made my first video blog post. Vlog, for those in the know - now including you, Readers. It contains some actual information, based on my previous post about The Marshmallow Test. 

It also contains some silliness, since we're talking about me. The husband says I make some weird faces that I don't make in everyday conversation. For that, I am grateful. I mean, that I don't look like this usually. 

I have to confess that if I were better at this video-making, I would cut a few seconds here and there. However, I'm working on the saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." I figured I might as well get it out there and move forward. Act confident, become confident. Plus, a lot of us need to develop self-control, and I have info on how to do that. 

Mastering Self-Control. Or Not.

Scene: kitchen table. Remains of dinner present. Children absent. Just the husband and I and the dog, despairing of collecting any treats at all. The husband reaches into the snack cabinet and takes two cookies. He offers one to me.

Me: (After a pause.) No, thanks. IF I don’t have one now, THEN I can have a bigger one later.

Husband: Ah! The Marshmallow Test in action. I get it.

Me: That’s right. Self-control in action.

             *                                    *                                    *

The husband was referring to my latest bedtime reading, Walter Mischel’s, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self Control. I wrote about the Marshmallow Test in a previous post. For those not as interested in psychology as I am, I’ll summarize. It’s a test, devised by Mischel in the 1960s, that involves bringing a young child into a room, and offering her the option of one fabulous, limbic-system triggering treat right now, or two fabulous, limbic-system triggering treats if she waits. The tester then tells the child she will be leaving and will return later. There is a hotel bell on the table in the room, and the tester tells the child she may ring it at any point and the tester will return. If she doesn’t ring it at all, and she doesn’t eat the treat (a marshmallow left on the table by the bell) then she can have the double fancy treat when the tester returns. Then the tester leaves the room and watches through a one-way glass window while the child either gives in, or applies amusing and creative methods of distracting herself (nose-picking; turning her back on the marshmallow; talking to the bell; even falling asleep) until the tester returns.  IF the child waits, THEN she will have a greater reward. The If-Then implementation strategy in action.

Mischel went on to study these participants many years later, and discovered that the ones who were able to delay gratification at four and five were doing, on the whole, much better in school, and were less obese, and generally more successful than those who went for that one marshmallow.  His results have been somewhat misunderstood by the general public in ways that do a disservice to people who come from poor neighborhoods, broken homes, abusive situations, or any other kind of high-stress environment. People have assumed that his results were definitive, reflecting some kind of innate amount of self-control. There have been runs on marshmallows as anxious parents rush to test their preschoolers, under the misapprehension that unless the children can delay their urge to eat the treats, they are doomed to failure. 

I’m joking about the runs on marshmallows, Readers. I am not joking about the misunderstanding of Mischel’s test.

Mischel learned, early on, that the ability to delay gratification depends on many variables. The ability is not innate; it’s circumstantial. According to Mischel, the temptation triggers the “hot” neural system – the limbic system, which is our more primitive system of arousal. The “cool” system – the prefrontal cortex – takes time to kick in. A child who lives under stress of poverty, disorder, or some other miserable situation will have a sensitive limbic system trigger. It makes sense, in that situation, to take what you can get when you can see it in front of you because you might not get anything if you wait for something you can’t see. A child who has had positive, trusting relationships with adults will be able to wait longer than a child who has been let down by adults. A child who knows how long he will have to wait for the adult to return does better than a child who doesn't know when the tester will return. A child who is primed with strategies for resisting temptation will do better than a child who hasn’t been. The upshot is that self-control is teachable. So if you prime the cool system ahead of time, it will override the hot and stop you from eating that single marshmallow. If you help the highly stressed child to change his reaction to those circumstances, he can have as much ability as the child from the stable environment to delay gratification.

Which brings us back to me and my If-Then implementation plans, which have helped me wrench myself away from the hot triggers of Pinterest, etc., with the promise of a reward after I do some work.

It also brings us back to me and the husband at dinner the other night. Remember that pause, before I refused a cookie at that moment, with a plan to have a bigger, better cookie later? Well, right after that admirable marshalling of my prefrontal cortex, I admitted to the husband that my first thought, during the pause, was that since no children were there, I could have a cookie now AND have a bigger one later, without them knowing I violated the dessert rule. Such as it is. The rule I mean. If I had to summarize it, I would say the rule is, have dessert, but never quite as much of it as you would like, and only have it once per night.

But, Readers, you see how it works, the self-control, IF-Then, small reward now or hold out for a bigger, better reward later.

Then I went upstairs and took a piece of chocolate from my secret stash.

As ever, I am a work in progress.

Success and Jalopies

Now seems like a good time to check in with those New Year resolutions. It’s the end of February, and my email inbox and Twitter feed are full of strategies for implementing habits, keeping resolutions, and bits about why We Are Failing To Do So.

When I say “we” I mean me. I was struggling to get my routine back on track. I mentioned in my New Year’s post that I have enough resolutions to keep me busy. Except what happened was that the wheels fell off the jalopy. The system broke. As it is wont to do, from time to time. In my healthy, long-view of life, I realize that it’s all about breaking down and revving up again. System breakdown is part of the system. 

But, now, Readers, I’m improving. See, when I realized that my jalopy needed an overhaul, I began reading those things about success and habits that, handily, poured into my email inbox. Apparently, I’m not the only one with a broken down jalopy.

This tidbit came to me, via Brain Pickings, which is a really great blog, by the way. This is an excerpt from a Vanity Fair profile of President Obama:

“You need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. ‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,’ he said. ’I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. ‘You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.’” http://explore.noodle.com/post/31869759671/you-need-to-remove-from-your-life-the-day-to-day

To be frank, wavering over what to wear is one of the things I enjoy, at least sometimes, so I don’t want a uniform. However, I do make too many decisions. I can’t settle on a routine. There’s dithering and deciding many mornings. Should I do sun salutations or physical therapy stretches or deep breathing or meditation? Should I go to the gym right after the kids are out of the house, or should I sit down at the computer and write? All these decisions lead to fatigue and naps. And putzing around on Facebook and email. Or, in scientific terms, willpower depletion. 

This quotation from President Obama reminded me of something Matthew Seyd wrote about chess players in the book Bounce; namely, that what makes chess masters so great is not superior intelligence, but that they have practiced so many chess moves so often that they’ve memorized sequences. They have routinized (thanks, President Obama – my Word dictionary doesn’t recognize this neologism, but if Jimmy Joyce could invent words, you can, too) and automated hundreds and hundreds of moves. Consequently, they have brain energy to spare to figure out what to do in a challenging game.

Around this time, whilst putzing around on FB and email I came across inspiration via an email from an online Pilates teacher. She was writing about developing consistency in exercise, but I think we can extrapolate to other areas of life. According to Robyn Long, the secret to building and maintaining fitness is to set one goal at a time. A person can get overwhelmed with goals and give up, whereas if you pick one and stick to it, you develop the habit.

So, I decided I needed to be more like President Obama (who doesn’t, really?), more like a chess master, more like a Pilates instructor. I needed to routinize more of my system. If I did more things automatically, out of habit, then I would have fewer decisions to make about how to use my time. Fewer decisions would mean more energy. Then I would have more willpower left to take on the more challenging parts of my routine.

Key to success here seemed to be choosing an easy thing to automate. Something non-threatening (not writing, obviously), something to just get out of the way first thing. Like teeth brushing, or putting on deoderant. I chose sun salutations. They’re yoga, and they’re meditative, and they’re brainless.

That was over two weeks ago, Readers. I’ve kept up my streak. Even when I threw my back out last week, I managed to creak through a few sad ones. They were less sun salutations than sun grovels, but I counted them.

I don’t feel more like President Obama, and certainly not like a chess master. Pilates instructor?  A little. But I do feel more like Jerry Seinfeld, who has a famous work ethic – he X’s every day on the calendar that he works on jokes, and never gives up on his streak.

The best thing, really, is that once I’ve got that first wheel back on the jalopy, the others are easier. Soon, I’ll be rolling on to new things.

Speaking of jalopies rolling - the 16-year-old drove home from the library yesterday. I thought it went very well, and I only stepped on the imaginary brake for half the ride. However, to the husband she reported that the whole thing was “stressful” and that there was “too much to think about.”

Then the husband and I said, “That’s because it’s all new to you.” We kind of raced each other to say it first, I think, but I’m not sure. I can only speak for myself, and in this instance, I don’t want to. If you follow. 

Anyway, then he said, “Once you get more practice, a lot of it will become automatic and you won’t have to think about it.” You’ll know how far to let the steering wheel turn to straighten out, and you’ll have memorized the rules of the road. And the more stuff becomes automatic, the less energy you have to expend on it.

“Wow, I just drafted a blog post on this topic,” I said.

And that, in a nutshell, is the beauty of routine.

Calvin and Tiger Mom and Me

8:45 a.m. I’ve had my last meal for the next 30 hours. From here on out, it’s a liquid diet. I’m going for my first colonoscopy, Readers. I’d like to tell you that I am approaching this milestone with sang-froid, with insouciance, or even with stoicism; but alas, I am approaching it with my usual mix of abject anxiety and fear. It’s at these times – these times of abject anxiety and fear, which are really the same thing, aren’t they?- that I confront the chasm between the real me and the me I’d like to be. The me I’d like to be is a Katie Couric let’s-watch-my-first-colonoscopy-together-on-TV type. Instead I’m the type who dreads, fears, has insomnia, and wishes to be knocked out today and woken up when it’s over. 

I’ve heard that courage is perseverance in the midst of fear, so I guess I can pat myself on the back and call myself brave, even if I’m not going to watch the proceedings, let alone have millions of TV viewers watch along with me.

How did it all come to this? Age, of course. I’m approaching a certain age. Gracelessly, I might add. Although I suppose I don’t really need to say it. It’s obvious.

However, the other reason it has come to this is that in trying to be Big about Stuff, I have implemented two strategies I’ve learned in my success inquiry. The first is being proactive, as Stephen Covey stipulates. I figured it would take weeks and weeks to schedule this procedure, so I called ahead. I was being mature. I was also, it appears, using another technique: harnessing procrastination. The idea to be proactive about this procedure came to me while I was NOT working on my writing. So, delaying writing, I took care of other business, like calling to schedule my colonoscopy, thus harnessing procrastination in service of other goals.

And it turned out that the wait was not very long at all. In fact, it was really rather short. And so. Tomorrow I go. Full of awareness that I am somewhere inbetween the person I’d like to be and the worst version of myself.

The joke’s on me.

Speaking of being caught in between - I’ve been mulling the cognitive dissonance created in me by the serendipitious conjunction of two articles that came to my attention about the same time, a few weeks ago. One was an opinion piece by Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua and her husband Jed shilling their new book about what makes cultural groups successful in the United States. I’m not going to go into detail, nor am I going to link to the article, because I object to Chua’s approach to publicity for her books. Namely, she writes something incendiary, sure to cause controversy and create sales, and then on interviews complains that she is being misconstrued. So the latest controversy is that the title of this book of hers is The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America. The subtitle is the source of the controversy. She and Jed are getting accused of racism and stereotyping. Meanwhile, in interviews, she claims that these traits are not inherent to these successful groups – they are traits that can be taught to children, so they can grow up to be successful. Yet they titled their book, “rise and fall of cultural groups.”

Anyway, Tigermom and her hubby claim the three characteristics that all these groups share that drive their success are, 1) impulse control, 2) a sense of (group) superiority, and 3) deep insecurity. 

Well, there's oodles to say about this, but I really want to point out that the implicit definition of success from which Amy Chua and her hubby Jed are working is that traditional idea of rising up a ladder, achieving elite status and money, and competing for scarce resources “at the top.”

In short, it’s a familiar definition for a lot of people, including me. It’s also the definition of success that has made me feel most like a failure. I resist it, even as I am entangled in it.

The other article came to me via social media, just after reading the Chua op ed. A beautiful comic by Bill Watterson, author of Calvin and Hobbes, the best comic ever, that came to my attention. This comic. Well, I’m just going to copy out the text for you, because it is so great. Here it is:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life…A person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to purse other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential. As if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out…and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy….But it’s still allowed….And I think you’ll be happier for the trouble. – Bill Watterson.

That, upon the tail of the Chua article, summed up my whole success/failure dilemma. I mean, the definition of success Chua and her husband work from is pretty much the opposite of what Bill Watterson is talking about. Unless, of course, you’re Bill Watterson and write a fantastic comic strip that takes off and runs for years and you earn big bucks from it and then can afford to turn down licensing deals for your characters and so on. But, seriously, Amy Chua and her husband are describing how certain traits can make one prominent in a traditional profession or field - and rich.

Is that the best definition of success? It’s a definition of success, for sure. It’s the definition that many of us most understand. But it’s the definition that continues that “culture that promotes avarice and excess as the good life.”

My dilemma has been, I see now, that I’m caught between Amy Chua’s implicit definition of success and Bill Watterson’s.  I want to be the artist/writer/mom, but I feel I ought to have been the other kind of success, and I want the trappings of it.

What both these pieces made me think about is whether, if my life ended tomorrow, I could call myself a success. Can I accept my smallness? Can I take pride in my under-the-radar accomplishments? The moments when I kept my cool when confronted with a challenge from a child and found a good enough thing to say to get us all through it? Not the greatest thing. Not an amazing or profound thing. Just a good enough thing. Can I be satisfied with a solid marriage, with well-grounded daughters, with work that’s meaningful only to me and to a small circle of friends?

If this is all I ever am, can that be enough?

Habit Forming Can Be Habit Forming

Well, I sure hope so. That’s why I’m doing my parallel NaNoWriMo challenge: to establish a habit of writing a minimum number of words every day. Why? Because I’m so easily thrown by my self-doubts or my doctor’s appointments or the dog needing a walk or my self doubts – oops I already said that. I guess I mean it. I can get derailed so easily. I hit a tough spot in my writing. Next thing I know, I’m eating almonds and catching up on the latest Nordic Noir my MIL recommends. I’d like to establish that habit of regular words so that I keep working even when the self-doubt fairy comes to interrupt me. Like Trollope, known for his excellent, regular work ethic. Just to name one exemplary author. And he managed to write over forty books. I’m hoping that if I establish this habit then a day or two of total dreck won’t send me into a spiral of despair and turn me into a harpy harping on the husband and the children. Instead of a spiral of despair, I’ll weather it ass in chair.

That has a nice rhyme.

So now that November is almost half over, how am I doing? Thank you very much, I am doing very well. I have cranked out the requisite number of words, plus more. And I have weathered several spells, including one today, of the self doubt fairy beating me about the head with whispers about the futility of my work, of writing in general, and of my very existence. As I told my neighbor across the street via text: Ass in chair.

I enjoy being crass.

But this post is about more than establishing my word count habit. It’s about habit formation.  Over the past two years, here are some habits I’ve formed, or reinforced:

1.     Morning yoga. At least 8 minutes, currently about 15. Thank you, Dr. Oz, though it pains me to say it.

2.     Starting each day with a couple moments thinking of things for which I’m grateful and things for which I wish. Thank you every blogger, women’s mag, book, and inspirational speaker who has suggested this, though I hate to reveal myself as such a joiner.

3.     Daily exercise consisting of at least a constitutional. This has been a habit since high school.

4.     Mid-afternoon snoozle. This one is also a longstanding habit, dating back to before I napped over my keyboard at my job at Widener Library, before college, all the way back to, well, infancy. At this point, the daily snoozle is practically inadvertent. I might still be asleep, for all I know.

Then there are some other daily habits I am trying to establish, aside from the daily word count, such as:

1.     Meditation. Jerry Seinfeld does it every day, and so can I. I’m up to several days a week with this, but not every day. I haven’t found the ideal time for me to sit still yet.

2.     Greeting and saying good-bye to my loved ones such that we can see the whites of each other’s eyes, not shouting from one room to another. And not just because Gretchen Rubin wrote about it in her book.

Well, so much for habit formation. It’s useful, but only half the story. At least for some people, I imagine. Some people might need help breaking habits. Luckily for you poor souls, there is a book on this by one Charles Duhigg, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner.

I haven’t read his book. I personally, Readers – and I am being modest here – haven’t had to break too many bad habits. There was the split end picking I used to do in high school. I’ve since heard that hair picking is indicative of some kind of emotional disturbance, but in my case, I assure you I WAS FINE. TOTALLY. Just a little anorexic and depressed, but NOTHING MAJOR. Eventually, I cut my hair in the mid 80s and got happy and I have almost never picked a split end since then. Partly because I worry my eyes will get stuck.

This has left me with no bad habits at all. So I can't really help you with yours. Never fear - Charles Duhigg’s website provides a handy flow chart for breaking bad habits, which I will share with you. 

http://duhigg-site.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/How-to-Change-a-Habit.jpg

It’s kind of complicated, which just goes to show that you shouldn’t start bad habits. Like me. Or maybe it shows that Pulitzer Prize winning Charles Duhigg is just an overthinker. He could take a lesson – we all could – from the husband. He had a nail biting habit when we met, which he revealed during the first football season we spent together. And by “together” I mean in different rooms after I saw how het up he got and that he bit his nails. Then one day, under absolutely no pressure from me, he quit. He said, “I am going to stop biting my nails.” And then he did. Without a flow chart.

*

But wait, I wrote that stuff yesterday before driving the ballet carpool. Since then, I realized that I do have a bad habit. It is this. Every time I get out of my car, I pull the car keys out of the ignition with my right hand, then grab my bag and haul it towards me, and every time I do that I jab my hand towards my face with my key sticking out. Then I think, If I don’t stop grabbing the key that way, I am going to stick myself in the eye one of these days.

Reinactment

Okay, maybe there is another habit I could work on breaking. My habit of anxiety. You didn’t realize I had anxiety, you say? Well, I know it’s not obvious; but trust me, I suffer from anxiety - just a touch.  

Just the other day, my sister the psychoanalyst mentioned attending a talk at my niece and nephew’s school by some guy who described a technique for relieving anxiety involving a tennis ball and your own two hands. It’s called Mind Juggling. I share it with you, Readers, in case any of you want to try it. If so, please let me know. As I told my sister the psychoanalyst, the idea of banishing my anxiety and resetting my brain makes me nervous. But I probably should work on that, because otherwise how will I be able to focus on the car key thing? And if I don’t, somebody’s going to get her eye poked out, and that somebody is going to be me. Then I’ll really have a problem.

Fall Back, then Leap In

Thought for November: I’m challenging myself. That’s my new plan. Not that I don’t challenge myself. I mean, writing a book is a challenge. Only I haven’t been writing that book consistently enough to feel like I’m really in it, really doing it. 

This comes on the heels of last week’s post about realizing that when I feel stuck – waiting to be pronounced upon was my exact description of the situation – the system collapses, partly because I don’t challenge myself as much as I could. I’ve been thinking about The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. I’ve written about it here. I’ve been thinking that my system breakdowns are possibly due to resistance. Resistance being the enemy of art, according to Pressfield. To break down resistance, therefore, I am challenging myself.

Challenge the First: Running. Since the weather’s turning yucky, I’m taking my exercise back to the Y and I’m working out harder. Choosing a tougher workout with Kimmy. Why? Because I’m capable of running faster and I want to challenge myself to actually do it. Also - and this may be a slightly stronger motivator – a lot of research shows that intense, shorter workouts may be more effective at staving off middle age spread than longer, more leisurely ones. So I’m mixing it up. Adding a couple shorter, faster runs to my routine. I know I’m supposed to accept my body changing as I grow older. I know I’m supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to grow older. It’s just that vanity and my secret vision of myself as a 5’6” leggy ectomorph won’t let go of me. In short, I’m just not ready for my Spanx to roll down my belly when I tuck into dinner. On those rare occasions when I might want to struggle into them because I’m going “out.”  So there.

Challenge the Second: NaNoWriMo. It’s November, which means another National Novel Writing Month has come around, and I’ve decided to make use of it. No, I’m not going to write a novel. In fact, the very idea of writing a novel in a month is laughable. My novels have taken 9, 4, and 5 (that last unfinished) YEARS to write. However, since I underestimate my abilities regularly, I decided to try to crank out the verbiage this year in November, while the 260, 000 plus souls who have registered for NaNoWriMo crank out theirs. I’m going to go for 50, 000 words, too, but unofficially. I’m going to write a draft of my nonfiction book. In November. The Anne Lamott (also the Hope Perlman) way: by writing a shitty first draft, no looking back until it’s over. The month and the draft. 

I'm trying to change this:

 into one of these:

What will these challenges do for me? Well, the exercise challenge has obvious benefits. All those health benefits. I’ve always been sold on those. Indeed, I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel right if I pass a day with no exercise at all.

A hidden benefit of upping the challenge here is that I will be exercising my willpower, too. I’ll be challenging myself to run faster for longer. This will take extra willpower beyond the willpower to get out and get moving. And exercising willpower strengthens it, and strengthened willpower in one area frees up willpower in other areas, too.

Another benefit of my challenges will be (let’s hope) that I establish a new habit. Since well-known research has proved that establishing a new habit takes about twenty-one days, if I increase my word output to approximately 1600 words a day for thirty days, I may well have a great routine in place to carry me through those system breakdowns when they threaten in future. Momentum. So that the next time the system breaks down, it's less of a total collapse than a slowdown.

A final benefit of challenging myself may be that I get into the habit of doing just that. I break myself of whatever fear of failure or of success, of whatever remnant of shame or who-knows-what (maybe my sister the psychoanalyst knows what) keeps me keeping my expectations low. I know, I know, if your expectations are low, you won't be disappointed. But, frankly, that's actually just a load of hooey. You can live in a state of continual semi-disappointment that way, which may be worse than living with the aftereffects of full on disappointments. 

Now I’ve told you about my challenges, Readers, so I will have to abandon my blog and crawl into a hidey-hole if I fail to stick to them. C'mon, somebody else join the challenge, too!

Laura Vanderkam, Ben Franklin, Mornings & Me

Right after I finished Laura Vanderkam’s What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast I think I went on a tear. Is that a thing you say? Went on a tear? I got in a mood. A bad mood. Why? A combination of things.  My professional life is stalled. (Here I resisted enclosing professional in quotation marks to indicate irony.) School starting. Owning a teenager. (“You don’t own me,” “Yes I do, until you are Of Age.”*) That sort of thing.

Into that blah mental field fell Laura Vanderkam’s book, about which I have two brief overarching comments. 

1. The short answer to the question, “What do the most successful people do before breakfast?” is –a heck of a lot more than I. 
2. This book should be on your avoid list if you are afraid of contemplating your mortality. Because if there’s one thing this book made me aware of in an uncomfortable way, it is the finite number of minutes we have. Period.

Which is why I went on a tear. A bender. An irritability bender, to be specific. Nothing as fun as an actual bender. Just a bender of being totally annoyed with my family, especially with the husband, for doing anything other than making the absolute most of every available moment to do something productive and meaningful. So, the sight of his neck bent over his phone – highly irritating. The children enjoying the last days of summer indoors, drawing on the white board– aggravating. Aggravating is really the wrong word, as we all learned when we practiced for the SAT, but still, it is perfect in its misused definition for my feeling. Although, come to think of it, perhaps my new dictionary now contains this definition of the word aggravate, since many people use it to mean annoy. 

I just checked. Yes, now this usage of the word is accepted. Sorry, Dad.

Anyhoo, reading in Vanderkam’s book, for example, that a week has 168 hours, that a weekend (from 6 pm Friday to 6 am Monday) has 60, and that “You have fewer than one thousand Saturdays with each child in your care before he or she is grown up,” grabbed my attention. That doesn’t sound like a lot of hours, especially to person like me who needs her free time. And there’s this passage:

If you’ve got young kids, it doesn’t take long to realize that there won’t be many Christmas seasons when the little ones will race downstairs in the morning to see what Santa brought. They won’t always be eaeger to bake with you…Eventually they won’t care if you don’t put up a giant tree or go caroling or make hot chocolate. They’ll allow you to beg off making a snowman because you’re tired. But there are only a few winters – and only a few days each winter – that your children will ask to make snowmen with you. Someday, perhaps, you will be staring at the snow from the too-simple room of a hospital or nursing home, dreaming of the days when making snowmen with your children was an option.

Kill me now. I mean, how many times have I opted out of a kid activity for a little sanity-making mommy time? Instead, I should have been soldiering on saying, “Screw downtime. The kids will be gone before you know it, so wait until then. You’ll have nothing but downtime.” Or, as my friend Phil used to say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He is doing that now, poor soul, and I am glad of every minute he stayed awake for me. So you can see why coming upon the husband hunched over his smartphone playing a game makes me bonkers. Make it worthwhile, mister, or don’t do it at all!

But I digress, Readers. You want to know what successful people – the most successful people - do before breakfast. Well, look, I think you can pretty much guess it.

1. They go to bed early and get up early. We’re talking 5 or 6 a.m. Six am is pushing it. Put it this way, if you awake after dawn you’ve overslept. 
2. They do things that require undivided attention and willpower, but that are still appealing. LV says they use this time for things that are “important but not urgent.” Exercise. Meditation. Planning for work. Writing. The willpower thing is key. Willpower is limited. Science has proved it. Science has also proved that, like any kind of energy, it depletes through overuse. But you can also strengthen it through practice. Thus, the best time to do things requiring willpower is in the morning, because your willpower is fresh then. Later in the day, if you’ve depleted your energy on urgent tasks, you will find it hard to motivate yourself to take on the important but not urgent ones.

There’s  a lot more in this book. The book is a combination of three e-books and it covers what the most successful people do before breakfast, on the weekends, and at work. And while it did drive me to despair – in combination with several other non-related things – I found it interesting. I might even have picked up a tip or two.

Would you now like to know what I do before breakfast? Just for comparison? If I haven’t had insomnia? Which reminds me that this book assumes people just go to sleep at their nice and early Benjamin Franklin bedtimes, and wake up rested and refreshed, just like the peddler in Caps for Sale. There’s nary a mention of insomnia. I guess the most successful people don’t have it. Or they take a pill – although this option is missing from the book.

Anyhoo, I awake to the sound of the husband’s alarm. I pull myself from sleep by thinking of things I’m grateful for. Sometimes these thoughts are more coherent than others. Sometimes they blend into dreams. Next, I do fifteen minutes of yoga, so I won’t crack in half, then stumble downstairs and drink a large glass of water. Donna Karan does this too, I was delighted to learn. The water drinking, I mean. She didn’t mention the stumbling. I make eggs for the 10^th grader, and lunches for both kids and the husband. I feed the dog in the manner prescribed by the $140 dollar per consultation dog trainer: To wit, I sprinkle his kibble on the lawn so that he can stimulate and satisfy his prey drive by working for his food. I check my email and the annoying Facebook while he does this. Then I call him in and dry off his paws. I drive the 6^th grader to school some mornings. Some mornings she gets a ride from the neighbors. Then I eat breakfast.

Then I nap. Which only proves the obvious point: I am not one of the most successful people. But I get the job done.

 *These quotation marks do not indicate any actual conversation between my teenager and me.