FIMBY

January for the rest of us

I had one big goal for this month. One. My goal was to get supper on the table by 6:30 each night.

At the end of the month I can say I succeeded at this goal. I mentioned this in my last post, how using my freezer and the skills I learned in Whole Foods Freezer Cooking have been a game changer in this regard.

I don't think I could have done it, reached this goal, without taking that class.

That feels nice doesn't it? To start off a blog post with a success story. Yay me.

If my small triumph in this area of home management makes you feel less-than, not "enough" in the kitchen department, I assure you this is my one big "success" of the month. You've totally beaten me in other areas, I'm sure of it.

(I know. I know. This is not a competition, though everything conspires against us to make us believe it is.

This is an attempt at humor. I do not want you to feel bad about your supper making skills. But most of you are probably more mature than me, so when you read that someone has succeeded at something they set out to achieve you respond with kudos not insecurity. Yay you.)

Most days it feels like I can only be "good" and on the ball in just a few areas of life but certainly not all of them.

This month I was on the ball with cooking supper and getting it to the table on time. Which made for great evenings of cozy-ness and chill. I really loved that.

On the other end of the day, I meditated maybe three times this month, soaked in God's presence about the same, and completely stopped drawing. Totally dropped the ball. It wasn't intentional. I just really wanted to write. And I stole that morning time from myself to squeeze it in.

Evenings may be cozy as all get out, watching Gilmore Girls and reading in bed; knitting and listening to podcasts but I am also crawling out of my skin somedays about the state of my writing career. "Writing career?", you ask. Exactly.

I want to write. And this desire, and the words that keep coming, hijacked my carefully constructed early morning routine.

And here's the worst of it. All that stuff I've been feverishly writing in the morning, in lieu of the soul-care practices I worked hard to cultivate last fall, none of it is worth publishing (yet). I refuse to publish something that does not ring true and I'm having a hard time finding the resonance in that writing. It can't simply be that I want it to be true, it must be true.

As Anne Lamott would say it's the shitty first draft. The real kicker is that it's not the first draft.

I take issue with most January blog posts I read that focus on productivity, goal setting, and self-improvement projects in general.

I'm not trying to make myself into a better version of Renee. I'm trying to live in the head space and the heart beat of my true identity.

I'm wired for efficiency and productivity and so my areas of growth are to move away from being driven by those motivators, to venture into the messy and ambiguous terrain of learning how to accept situations I can't change, develop emotional resiliency, that kind of stuff.

But I don't find a lot of January blog posts about those topics. Honestly, I'm not looking. I don't want someone telling me what to do. I'm stubborn and prideful like that.

What works for me is stories. Well-written and humorous stories of people's failures and heartaches. And how they are learning to love themselves in that mess and how they love others. And then, then, if I read something that intrigues me and doesn't scare me too much or make me feel terribly insecure, I will go looking for the help I seek, and usually desperately need, from something I gleaned in those stories.

This isn't going to be one of those posts, a well-written and humorous story, but there is failure and heartache.

I recently fell back into the writings of Anne Lamott. For years she's been one of my favorite Christian-spirituality writers but I haven't adored all her books and I think I must have taken a break after a disappointing read a couple years ago. It happens.

Last week I found myself all out of reading material. I looked through my Goodreads to-read shelf while simultaneously scanning the available digital downloads at the library. Small Victories showed up on both.

The essays are new and "selected", which means old and previously published. I think I may have read some of them before in her previous books. I don't remember, which makes them new again to me. I devoured this collection of essays about grief and resiliency and love.

And then I googled "podcasts with Anne Lamott". I just needed more. And I found two author readings and Q&A sessions from former book tours.

I listened and I alternately laughed and then bawled my eyes out, one seamlessly transitioning into the other.

In one of those lectures she received the following question from an audience member. How do you foster resiliency?

Here's where I tell you that what I've been trying to write through this month is the truth of my own weakness in emotional resiliency and tolerance. And the pain and anxiety that has caused me and others.

Here's her answer to the question. Don't quote me, I scribbled these down while listening and some of these are my own paraphrases:

  • do all the things that make me alive and awake
  • stop hitting the snooze button (on life)
  • get outside
  • find emotionally healthy people (she said sober people since her past is alcoholism)
  • read the best books I can
  • read great spiritual masters
  • read more poetry
  • have impeccable friends
  • live the grace of not trying to fix other people
  • keep hiking
  • never stop trusting that I am loved ~ I am chosen ~ I am safe ~ and more will be revealed

Here's what I appreciate about this. Anne is over sixty years old. She's lived some hard knocks. She not a "look how I've turned my blog into a business" thirty-year old writer who dispenses self-help, without wisdom, for a living. I feel she's someone who's advice I can trust.

And I feel my cup filling once again; with love, a wee bit of wisdom, a wee bit of equanimity, itsy bitsy understandings that help assuage some of the frustration of failing and falling. Because listening to Anne, reading Anne, I know I'm not the only woman who feels needy and neurotic.

I just want to know that someone else's forward momentum, healing, spiritual growth, self-awareness journey, meditation practice, (fill in the blank with your own thing) is as herky-jerky as mine.

I got what I needed, and just like Anne says, help is always on the way.

In the most recent podcast I listened to, an old recording from the Free Library of Philadelphia, Anne said this,

The more you make yourself get less done every day the more glorious and sweet and expansive your life is going to be. I really recommend that every single day you figure out one thing you realized you’re not going to be able to do and in the morning you take it off the list. You say "it’s not going to happen. It’s going to be a good day. I’m going to get less done and I’m going to get it done less efficiently." And that is the secret of writing.

Ok. I'll take it.

I wanted to link to a couple of blog posts I really enjoyed reading this month. And some wisdom shared with me on Facebook. I thought I might weave them into the post but it didn't work out that way. So here they are:

And for those of you not jiving with the usual January groove, the one in which you must re-boot your life, yesterday, I thoroughly appreciate this idea shared with me on Facebook from Erin Curran:

I want to officially claim January as the "wrap-up/recover/renew order" month. I may use Candlemas/Imbolc (instead of New Year) as the day to commit to making an important change and then use the roughly 40 days until Spring Equinox to nurture and establish the change.

If January hasn't been the raging success you hoped it would be why not start with Candlemas/Imbolc, which this year is February 2nd, as your "fresh start". My preference is that January is for organizing my thoughts, ideas and plans for the New Year. It's not so much about making the radical changes, or even small changes. I totally jive with a wrap-up/recover/renew order protocol for the first part of winter. And when that feels kind of in place I like to start the intentions for the year. Just a thought.

Making a wellness plan for winter

Like I mentioned late last month, I'm participating in Hibernate this month. An online retreat by Heather Bruggeman.

This is my second year so I am familiar with the format but I also know a bit what to expect as roughly half the content is recycled. It's interesting to me how even the familiar content feels fresh and inspiring. Stuff I theoretically "know" from last year but am re-discovering anew. In part because I had a lot of personal growth stuff going on last winter and Hibernate was just one piece of the plans I was making for my year-long wellbeing.

This winter, I'm all about Hibernate. I don't have any other significant self-development and self-care projects on my radar so I can pour those energies into making the most of the course.

I'm not going to explain the Hibernate content here, because that's the course and it's not my material to share, but one of last week's activities/journaling exercises was to create a winter wellness recipe.

Over the past few winters I've been honing my winter wellness strategies. This post about my phototherapy lamp addresses some of those techniques and activities.

Creating a winter wellness guide is a fun and creative self-awareness exercise. Heather's prompt for us is to answer the question what makes me feel amazing?

I've been seriously pondering this question for the last year. I've had seasons of life where I've journaled through similiar prompts like what does your ideal day look like? etc. But my midlife crisis intensified the desire to identify the activities, ways of being in the world, relationships, values, etc. that really resonate with me. (And also made me wonder where I went wrong in past assessments to wind up so bruised at the end of 2014.)

I have been unapologetically on a mission to find myself and nurture myself, and so basically the pump is already primed for a "what makes you feel amazing?" writing prompt.

Answering this question can generate a lot of ideas, phrases, images, and colors. And I know that my own responses are heavily influenced by my personality and interests, and (hard) life lessons. My winter wellness plan then necessarily reflects who I am, my life experience, and my spirituality.

A little spiritual side note: The tricky part about including a spiritual/giving element to this wellness plan is that life-affirming outward giving, in response to God's love for us, is not driven by "what makes me feel amazing?" It is motivated by gratitude, worship, compassion and other God-given, God-honoring, and God-glorifying responses to God's love.

But the doing of what makes me feel amazing gives me the physical and emotional energy to be of service; available and willing for the work of Spirit in my life, which by its very nature will not always feel amazing, as I am stretched in ways that are discomforting. Which seems antithetical to a season of rest and comfort but is actually the natural outpouring of experiencing rest and comfort - to give rest and comfort.

Hibernate is a winter-focused retreat but I've noticed that all the things I love to do, that make me feel amazing, that feel like honest expressions of me, and that support my well-being, need to be present (in some measure) at all times of the year, though certain needs become dominant, or take on different expressions, during the distinct seasons.

Winter is the time to focus on the winter-expressions of "what makes me feeling amazing?"

Organization and planning feature heavily into my winter intentions because of how I'm wired, but also because January heralds a new calendar year. And all the logistical (new schedules, changing routines) and metaphorical (starting fresh, tabula rasa) implications of that necessitate organizing the household for not just a new season, but a New Year. It's a heady time for an organization geek like myself.

I like to spend time making and tweaking the schedule, organizing our time before I start organizing, and re-organizing space and tackling creative projects. Those projects (bright shiny objects) are tempting but I feel better getting general life organized and a routine established before hauling out the sewing machine and tackling organizing projects around the house.

That's really what January is all about. Creating and tweaking the winter routine, talking about goals with Damien, making financial plans, making yearly plans, re-establishing daily habits that slide over the holidays, etc. And these aren't resolutions they're just the stuff I naturally think about and deal with at the turn of a new year.

The second phase of winter (by the way, the seasons of winter is my own idea entirely, not part of the Hibernate material) is all about making stuff, this year mostly hands-on creative projects to organize and decorate our space.

If early winter is all about cozy, and it is, this part of winter is a bit more crazy. By the third week of February cozy is starting to feel claustrophobic if we don't let off some of that steam. All that careful planning of early January starts to unravel and we take breaks from our routines to let off some of our winter indoor energies.

Right around this time we will celebrate Laurent's 15th birthday and Damien's mom will come for a visit. It will be perfect timing for our annual mid-winter break. We-can't-keep-up-this-schedule-anymore-and-winter-is-starting-to-irritate-me is a well-known phenomena in our house. I just go with it.

Then it's late winter, and at this point it's best if I have plans on the horizon to get out of Dodge. Mom and I are cooking up a retreat idea for that month and it is one of my main goals this winter: to make that happen. My other main goal: get outside every day.

Late winter is also the time I am reserving for more indoor attraction city exploration. Botanical Gardens, a museum or two.

  • January - make order and make cozy
  • February - make stuff and make crazy
  • March - make it through

Here's what my winter wellness plan is not however, it's not a thinly veiled attempt at self-improvement, "this winter I will eat better, exercise more, love move, more, better...". It's certainly not about productivity, or whipping the house into order.

It's about creating a seasonally-inspired, and realistic wellness structure for winter. It almost looks like resolutions, goals, and intentions, but coming through the kitchen door, like trusted family and friends, instead of the unexpected and unfamiliar (and therefore suspect) guests who use the front door.

My winter wellness plan is not about the activities so much or what they will accomplish, it's not about goal setting, and measuring my progress. There is a place and time for that, this isn't it. A winter wellness plan or recipe is an attitude and intention for the season, it's how I want the winter to "feel".

I do have a couple specific goals for each month. One of my January goals is to establish the habit of having supper consistently on the table by 6:30 each night.

Last fall we would sit down to supper anywhere between 7:30 to 8:30 because of our schedule (if I was out of the house till 6, for example) and because I strongly dislike cooking every single night so I would procrastinate like nobody's business even on the days I had no out-of-the-house excuse.

Whole Food Freezer Cooking another course by Heather, was a game changer for me. Now I only cook 3 meals a week but we eat 6 home cooked meals a week (Damien cooks one). Two of those are meals I pull from the freezer, having prepared on a previous week on one of my freezer cooking nights.

And here's the thing: preparing an extra meal for the freezer does not take double the effort, it takes maybe an extra 20 or 30 minutes maximum. And then I save 1-1.5 hours of meal prep time on those nights off of cooking.

So the actual schedule looks something like this:

  • Monday - at home day, cook a double meal
  • Tuesday - grocery shopping afternoon, come home late, eat from freezer
  • Wednesday - skiing day, eat from freezer
  • Thursday - at home day, cook a regular or double meal
  • Friday - homeschool co-op, store-bought pizza or something else
  • Saturday - usually at home, cook a regular or double meal
  • Sunday - Damien cooks

Supper at 6:30 is one of my New Years goals or resolutions that supports other goals, besides giving our bodies time to digest before bed. It makes relaxing evenings possible (one of my winter wellness needs) by providing a definitive end point to the work day. But seriously, I simply could not make this happen if I had to be cooking every night.

I have a evolving and never-ending list of tasks that make up my moments, my days, and my weeks and I do have specific goals for winter, but a winter wellness plan sets the tone for those endeavors and reminds me of what is really important to me during this particular season.

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