Reverb#6: Make

December 6 – Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it? (Author: Gretchen Rubin)

Hooray for Gretchen! The last thing I made was a pound cake about an hour and a half ago. It is for a special dinner I'm making for my Mom tomorrow. Shhh, don't tell, but we're going to have a "simple and easy" Trifle with our Roast Beef. (The Trifle was supposed to be made with pre-made Sara Lee pound cakes, but I checked two grocers here and neither carried them (or, indeed, anything remotely plain like a pound cake.) Nothing for it but to make my own. I had planned on doing that with my daughter as part of her "baking class" but she was at a Girl Guides Pool Party tonight.

I followed this ratio recipe. I loved the simplicity of it. And yes, I weighed out the butter, sugar, and flour--just to be in the proper spirit of the thing.

Is there something I want to make?

Absolutely.

How about Days 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of my December Daily?

(Yikes, typing it all out like that is awful. I hadn't realised I was that far behind! I've gotten very discouraged with my current camera though.)

I have also been working on the calendar project: and I need to get that done and put in the mail yesterday, too.

I will catch up on Sunday and Monday.

Yes. That's the plan.

Thanks Gretchen!

Free Falling: A Follow up to Letting Go.

The chorus of this song is what's powerful: the verses make only minimal sense. The idea that being free is also to be in a state of free fall is exhilarating: we have to be willing to be untethered from everything safe and familiar. That's my take on it anyway.

In other words, ignore the girls, watch the skateboarders.

The Happiness Project

From Gretchen Rubin's site:

A “happiness project” is an approach to changing your life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions.

I find it difficult to explain Rubin's book: "The Happiness Project." I just finished it yesterday. I loved it.

Reading it felt like listening to a friend chat about her life. She is warm, engaging, personable, humble, self-aware, honest and straight-forward. It became one of those books I didn't want to finish, because to put it down would feel like losing a friend. Fortunately, she has a blog.

The book is about a year of her life when she decided to become "happier." As she says herself in the book, it's a sub-genre of non-fiction called "stunt" non-fiction. And rather than get upset about it, (as was her first reaction) Rubin writes, she decides to "re-frame" the situation as look at it in a positive light. And that's exactly how the book stops simply becoming a lively and engaging chat, or a memoir and becomes something else. It's not really a self-help book, in the way we understand those things. But it also sort of is; by showing us her own (quite approachable) journey of transformation it lays down the path for the rest of us (though we will all travel it our own way, as we must).

Rubin decided to work on one area of her life per month, and each month is a chapter in the book. (She follows the same scheme on her blog.) To give you an idea of what she explores, here's the table of contents.

• January: Boost Energy (Vitality)
• February: Remember Love (Marriage)
• March: Aim Higher (Work)
• April: Lighten Up (Parenthood)
• May: Be Serious about Play (Leisure)
• June: Make Time for Friends (Friendship)
• July: Buy Some Happiness (Money)
• August: Contemplate the Heavens (Eternity)
• September: Pursue a Passion (Books)
• October: Pay Attention (Mindfulness)
• November: Keep a Contented Heart (Attitude)
• December: Boot Camp Perfect (Happiness)

A introductory chapter and epilogue frame, explain, and follow-up the project nicely. There's also a small blurb about setting up your own project and a fantastic book list.

Within each area Rubin sets herself resolutions to follow, things to do to make herself happier. Along the way, she discovers her own personal truths, (Secrets of Adulthood), some principals to guide her life (Gretchen's 12 Commandments) and some deeper, meta-truths about happiness and its relationship to life in general: The First to Fourth Splendid Truths. (All of which are on her blog).

I am quite tempted to make "Happiness" my one little word for 2011 and using Gretchen's template, transform my life with an eye to becoming happier next year. I think that would be marvelous. But I also have the feeling that that's not exactly my path. We'll see. It could simply be that I am not defining "happiness" broadly enough. As Gretchen's book demonstrates it is a pretty big umbrella.

Nonetheless, reading the book and creating your own happiness project would be a worthy means of self-transformation. I highly (and happily) recommend The Happiness Project to everyone.

Food for thought (and the holidays!)

Hooray for Scott Abel. He's a fellow who writes on fitness --and mostly writes critiques of the fitness and diet industry. He talks sense.

When people are told over and over again to subtract their enjoyment of food from the traditional celebrations they have known their whole life, then there is no more safe-haven. And then there is no more a place to ground oneself into being and feeling whole; embracing joy. Without being able to psychologically embrace the whole experience of the holidays, including food indulgence, then more is lost than gained. If you want to measure that and judge it on a bathroom scale, then I say even greater is the loss.

and,

You can never own or have a truly positive experience with anything that generates fear, stress, or anxiety.

Read more on his blog..

I found this on You-Tube. It's Desiree Walker, a woman he trained for a fitness competition. In another article he talks about her "athleticism." I now see what he meant. The best part? The huge grin on her face.

Reverb #5: Letting Go

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)*

I had all sorts of answers for this one until this morning.

I had all sorts of thoughts swirling in my head. I could answer: I let go of perfectionism this year. "Best is good. Better is best." It really is--and it is a daily practice, a daily ritual of reminding myself that it is so.

I could talk about how I let go of my investment in homeschooling my daughter and let her go to school. That one still smarts.

I thought about keeping things light and breezy and talking about how I got rid of hundreds of pounds of stuff with various de-cluttering projects this year. I could have deepened that with a reflection on how de-cluttering can be a spiritual practice: a "warming up" as it were, of the way to shed attachment to any particular identity (as expressed by the items we keep on display) .

I thought about discussing my anger and unforgiveness, still, towards certain family members and how I'm slowly realizing that that's really my anger and unforgiveness of myself projected onto that person(s).

But this morning, I re-listened to Session 5 of Richard Rohr's Lecture series called, "The Art of Letting Go." (Yes, I know. It hadn't even occurred to me until this morning that that was what I was listening to.)

And I was struck anew with a truth I have learned before: that growth requires dying. The mustard seed must die before it becomes a tree. You must lose yourself to find yourself. All that. I knew that.

What I didn't know is that the current hell I find myself in is just the death throes of another growth.

(And just what does "hell" look like, at the moment?
Well, there's the yelling.
The fear my son needs more help than I can give him.
The shame of being fat.
Loneliness.
The disconnection from any spiritual life at the moment.
and, here's the kicker, my sense of powerlessness to do anything about any of it.)


Since I devoured Brene Brown's recent book, "The Gifts of Imperfection," I have been aware that I need to find others to help me get through the crap I am currently stuck in. Brown writes that in order to process shame, one needs a "safe place" to share it--a person who has earned the right to hear the story and hold it.

I have been thinking two parallel thoughts (1) I need a therapist, and (2) we need to find another Church. In both, though, I'm looking for the same thing: a person, a woman to model what the next stage looks like, someone to ease me into the surrender to God that must happen if I am not to regress into a further self-centered, egotistic brat.

I know, deep down in my gut, that I am not sufficient to carry myself through the current crises. I've been in crises for over a year. I'm doing my best. I've been reading books, listening to Richard Rohr, even! I've started journaling again and (obviously) using this space to tackle more complex topics that simply organizing, de-cluttering and housecleaning (as important as those things are). But no matter what I do, I am not going to get myself out of the current darkness.

So, I really don't think I can progress beyond my current state of stuck-ness without others. And that kills me. Furthermore, I have developed a severe mis-trust of women, generally.

But, I can't do it on my own--and right now, I cannot see how I can do it with others, let alone who this person is supposed to be and how I am supposed to find her given the state of extreme emotional isolation I currently live in.

So, there we go. I haven't done it yet, but this is my (public) promise to continue to let go; to let go of my fears and mistrust and move on.

*I realise I am quite behind in my reverb writing. Other than perhaps making it difficult for folks to find certain prompts, it doesn't matter at all.

Reverb #4: Wonder

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis)

Did I cultivate a sense of wonder? Should I cultivate a sense of wonder, different or better than the one I already have?

What, exactly, does Davis mean by wonder?

Is it to stop and look at a pretty sunset or sunrise when one happens to notice?
Check. I've even been known to interrupt people mid-sentence to say, "Look at that pretty sky!"

Does it mean to marvel at a newborn?
Sorry, no newborns (for me) this year.

But I had an experience last night--I wonder if it was of wonder?

It was the most mundane of situations. My husband and I were grocery shopping. Together. Sans kids. It was the Big Shop. It is difficult to describe just how BIG this big shop is. I'd meant to take my camera and take a shot of all the bags in the back of the jeep, but in the frantic rush to get Aurelia out the door to he Girl Guide meeting at the same time, it was forgotten.

The shopping list was four pages (and a note on the back). C (my husband) had volunteered to go with B, (my son) alone, but I figured I'd better go just to read the list. I could lean on the cart. My back was quite bad--just horrible pain everytime it was jarred or jostled--which basically meant that every step was agonizing. Reaching up for things on the shelves was problematic, reaching down was impossible. So, my husband came with me.

It was fun. He didn't hover. He went off looking for the things I told him to get. I sort of forgot the reason he was with me was to help me--not to help the shopping trip go more efficiently. But, there he was, smiling, walking, catching up, wandering off. He was there. He was helping. It was enough.

And that was just kind of wonderful.

But, you know, if it weren't for this prompt, if it weren't for the awareness, I may never have noticed. I've had my eyes open looking for wonder since this prompt came a few days ago: and that has made all the difference. I feel like I'm on the tip of something important.

I am going to take Mr. Davis up on his offer for the Wonder Guidebooks. Check out the generous offer on his blog here: Tracking Wonder.

and, pardon me, but, have a wonder-full day.

December Daily: Day 3

Another prompt from Shimelle. Christmas Cards. In addition to doing the page: I actually got my Christmas cards done and ready to mail! I'm so relieved.

I hand wrote my journaling* as you can see on a Fancy Pants journaling tag.


Flip it up and there's our annual newsletter tucked into a library card pocket. I'd just used an envelope on the previous page and didn't want to use it again so quickly.


When you flip over the Basic grey "number" tag we have the Christmas card photo I included with our cards--and all the shots I took trying to get it!



I apologize for the horrible pictures of my pages.

This was a lot of fun to put together. I love the fliping up and flipping over. I like the fact that you have to pull the newsletter out. I made the tag and box word art pieces with two fonts: Basic Sans Heavy and Blackjack. I based them on the ones Ali Edwards did.

Here was the original "foundation."



*Journaling reads:

I don't make our Christmas cards simply because I don't want anyone to feel they ought to keep them. I tend to buy my cards during the sales after Christmas, too.
I always personalize them with a photo of the kids and a newsletter. It's difficult to write without sounding like I'm bragging, though!

(On Day 4 we attended a performance of Handel's Messiah. I was moved to tears. Two family members fell asleep, and another drew pictures all the way through. I have to let that whole experience sit for a bit before I can figure out how to approach the journaling.)