An experiment in progress

Hello future self.  How are you?  I am writing. Here is my very first blog entry.  This may very well go the way of many of my endeavors started in the New Year, but I know that you wish that I had written more (at least when I imagine you, you wish that), and that you wish I had made more of a sustained and successful effort to prioritize doing the things that I keep wanting to do for my own sake but don’t.  I’m hoping that just maybe writing a blog entry every Friday morning will help with both endeavors.   

I hope you are enjoying long walks and your cozy house out in the country with views of mountains or loon-filled-lakes or horse-filled meadows, and that you have the right amount of time with well-loved family and friends, you have plenty of adventures, and that you have a long legacy of discerning joy and shining light in dark places.  And that you have done your bit to save our planet.

I am inspired by my husband Dorian’s cousin Sarah, who manages to write the SHU box blog and podcast while also being a Pediatric Endocrinologist and mother of three.  I am also inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies, which says that I am an Obliger, and that the reason I can meet external commitments (if they are clearly defined and have deadlines) but not internal ones is not because I am a weak, flawed, awful person but because like many people I am constitutionally unsuited to making myself do things that only matter to me without external accountability. 

Gretchen Rubin says that to succeed, I have to find ways to make myself accountable to others even for my own personal goals.  Many people I admire can achieve their own internal goals as readily as external ones (the Upholders – which I’m guessing includes Sarah, Gretchen, and Dorian), but I need to stop beating myself up and learn to work within the constraints of who I am. 

Hence my attempt to make myself accountable to you, future self, and to any people who may happen to come across my blog and notice whether I did indeed write weekly and make any progress on my goals, and who might even find some ideas and inspiration to achieve their own.

I turned 45 on January 1^st.  It’s getting a bit silly to keep waiting for organized awakened fabulous non-frazzled tomorrow-me to swoop in and fix my life.  After all, I am already the tomorrow-me of many yesterday-me-s.  

To be fair, by many measures my life is already pretty terrific.  I have the kindest, most loving husband I can imagine, and two daughters who are among my favorite people.  I have steadfast friends, wonderful extended family, a job with colleagues whom I like and the financial means to support my family and go on great vacations.

So what is it that I keep postponing to tomorrow?

I want to write music.  Over the past several years many songs have gurgled up from the wellspring of my being, and getting one of them written down and performed by the Reading Community Singers was incredible.  But there are more.  I would be so sad to have never captured and shared them, and not to have listened for more, but I never quite get around to it.  Somehow, the songs feel core to who I am and why I am here, and I need to honor them.

I want to write.  I’m not sure the outlet.  Essays and poems, I think, and hopefully this blog!   I like to reflect on life, and writing is a means to distill my thoughts.  I am also very private and am loathe to share what I write with others, but I want to get over that because what if something I write resonates with somebody?  That is part of what made sharing my song so powerful.  By the way, I am a huge fan of “Quiet” author Susan Cain and her idea that we introverts need to be willing to show others what is inside our suitcase from time to time. If you haven’t seen her TED talk on the power of introverts, you should!

I want extended time alone in Nature.   I get depressed and cranky without it.  I need to make sure I get weekly doses, but I also long for a longer stint of hermity refuge in the wilderness.  Maybe the Northern Forest Canoe trail?  Maybe a cabin in Canada, or in the White Mountains?

I want to be strong and healthy and fit, and preferably less overweight.  Apparently if you do cardio regularly starting in middle age, your heart can become young and elastic and happy.  If  you wait beyond that, it is too late and your heart will be sad.  So I should find a way to get a cardio exercise routine going this year in some way that I can sustain and in which I don’t constantly injure myself.  Also, apparently a Mediterranean diet helps you not be depressed and to live a long time and sounds yummy, so I should do that.  I think you will be happy I did, future self, and it will be good for my family, too.

I want to be awake and courageous and grateful, and less frazzled, fearful, and perfectionistic.  I also want to leave this world a better place than I found it.  Stopping global warming would be great.  Not sure how to turn that into concrete actions for this year, but I do want to become more mindful and cultivate daily gratitude and to savor all of my time with my family.  In religious-speak, my heart longs for God and the fruits of the spirit, or the ground of all being, or to wipe the muck off its golden Buddha nature or I’m not quite sure what, but I’m quite a mess in that department and won’t to go there in this post.  I have no idea what to do about the global warming bit.

It sounds like a tall order! 

My goal by Friday next week – buy and install Notion 6 music composition software that I can use on my Mac and iOS devices and figure out how to write a melody with it.  I had been using Sibelius, but that means sharing a Windows desktop with my husband and not being able to work on songs during my commute.  Also, it is very well reviewed and I got birthday money from my dad.  What better birthday present!   I will also try out the easy introductory cycle cardio class at Tread Reading for all ages and fitness levels and see if my back survives.