Unplugging to Recharge

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to recharge my batteries, so to speak.  It’s not just a matter of getting enough rest or sleep, nutritious food and exercise, or even time away from work and the computer – though all that helps, of course.

There’s something about refilling my well that has been eluding me. What balances all the reading/writing/teaching/coaching/learning that I do?  It’s not just rest. And even some seemingly restorative activities – like reading fiction for fun – don’t really work because it’s just more words.

Aha. I need something engaging that doesn’t involve words. I need problems to solve that don’t use that linguistic part of my brain… hmmm…

Um. Hello. It’s me. Your studio. Remember me? All you have do is spin around in that new fancy new chair of yours and you’re in another world. Want to give it a try? Not in the mood right now? That’s okay. Get up and go to the garden. Or the kitchen. Just make something without words.

It’s not just enough to unplug from work activities. In order to recharge my batteries, I need to plug into something else.

• • • • •

Since unplugging from work and plugging into something else is a challenge for many of us, I thought it might be fun to start a little Monday tradition of reporting on how I recharged my batteries over the weekend. Maybe you’ll be inspired. Maybe you’ll have suggestions. Maybe this series will last, maybe it won’t. Let’s see what happens…

Highlights of June 19

• Traditional Saturday morning jaunt (with special coffee treat) to the island to take Max for a swim. Minus unintentionally pissing off the fisher-people this week, it was the usual relaxing and pastoral outing (that’s why it’s a tradition).
• Breakfast, including muffins made from strawberries and rhubarb that came in our CSA box. Mmm.
• Cleaned kitchen afterwords – before things piled up.
• Started laundry (two loads).
• Sent Dad and FIL e-cards for Father’s Day.
• A little light bookkeeping (but no checking email!).
• Put away papers piled on top of printer (yes! that had been bugging me for a couple weeks).
• Cleaned bathroom (hallelujah! if you had seen the tub, you’d understand).
• Made my own air freshener and anti-scum-and-funkiness tub spray (aka: “fun with essential oils” and “why would you buy this stuff?”). Much debate with sweetheart over whether air freshener actually smelled good.
• Lunch break: ate half of sandwich left over from lunch I made for sweetheart on Friday. Damn, I make a good sandwich!
• And over in the craft corner (actually spread out on our living room floor since last weekend): finished making summer coverlet for the bed (a light blanket inside a light duvet held in place with buttons – white-on-white motif turned out a very cool retro-modern). Enjoyed listening to radio like Prairie Home Companion while I worked – which I love but hardly ever do. This took hours – of both flow and discipline. Made myself finish – which took until bedtime.
• Indulged in mac’n'cheese from a box for dinner. Mmm. Childhood goodness.

Highlights of June 20

• Slept in. Fabulous (minus very weird and anxious dream about work – obviously not fully unplugged – I blame it on being cold from using new summer blanket too early).
• Lingered over Sunday paper with coffee.
• Made us a very pretty breakfast (with garlic parsley jack cheese -oohlala- in our eggs) served on my favorite breakfast plates (cheery and sentimental).
• Lingered over the paper some more; did a word game in the living section (can’t tell you when I last did that).
• Flipped through the magazine I was using as a table for word game (hey look! it’s from 2002!  never noticed – I should just recycle old ones instead of buying new).
• Cleaned kitchen again before things piled up (go me!).
• Picked up paper and old papers that had been piling up and put in recycling.
• Folded laundry and ironed shirts with window open so I could listen to neighbor quietly practicing his guitar playing (nice). Replaced a button missing from one of the shirts (like the filing, that’s been nagging at me for weeks).
• We’re now ready for week ahead and it’s sunny, so onward to the garden! Tidied and pruned. Planted cucumber and bean starts purchased at farmer’s market, um, two weeks ago? Wow. Things are going to town out here! Yumminess is on it’s way…
• Showered. Used all the really good, delicious smelling soaps and lotions. What am I saving them for?
• Made another yummy meal for dinner which I enjoyed with my sweetheart.
• Walked the dog.
• Went to thrift store with sweetie and came away with some fashion goodness. $20 buys a lot of fun at Goodwill.
• Checked on parents house (they are traveling) – their garden is busting out too! Abundance is everywhere…
• Tired. But in a good way. New Hercules Poirot mystery on PBS (with popcorn) was the perfect end to a lovely day.

My idea is not to bore you with a play-by-play of my weekend. I just don’t know how else to get at telling you the story of what happened.

What happened was I allowed myself to slow down. Yes, there were things to be done, and I did them, but it’s been a while since I felt I had time to putter like that, to move from one thing to the next without looking at the clock or feeling pressured to hurry.

There seemed to be time for “extras.” Like making muffins or putting food on special plates. For e-cards. For essential oils. For crafting. For puzzles. For mending. For guitars. For sunshine. For my favorite lotion. For new skirts I don’t need, but like a lot. For finishing.

I won’t tell you I didn’t think about work. I did. But because I made a point of finishing what needed finishing Friday (this was key) – it was very background sort of thinking. And I had some really great ideas while gardening (I should garden more often – it definitely tops the shower for bringing on good ideas – ideas that I often later forget because I’m not in a place where I can easily write them down).

I must say that entering my weekend with the clear intent of play and enjoyment – and following through on that – has resulted in starting my week much more rested and recharged – excited even – than what’s been the norm lately.

It’s from all those new ideas.

If that’s what puttering about gets me, then that was some puttering worth repeating.

A round-up of the week’s lessons learned.

It’s been a good week of noticing and experimentation…

I found myself wondering while doing yard work why I had such awful music going through my head. “Because your brain can only play what it has heard,” I answered myself (time to stop vegging out to VH1’s Best Songs of the ’80s I guess). Made me think a lot about other annoying forms of mind chatter and destructive self-talk…

Also while in the garden, I remembered how much of its success depends on good preparation and maintenance. We focus on the planting and the harvest, but it’s stuff like watering regularly that makes the difference.  Apparently, I rediscover this every summer.

And I realized that this was the same as that. Adopting a new MO is all well and good, but it’s going to take a lot more practice to shift this pattern. Love it when I connect the dots.

Lastly, a bit of clever planning: I wrote a short list of about a half dozen small tasks on a little post-it note and used it throughout the week along with my daily sheets. They were my “break tasks.”  When I needed a time-out, I did one of those things instead of aimlessly web surfing (or whatever).  Interesting to note, they were mostly cleaning/decluttering tasks, but I don’t think that was the key to the success of this little experiment.  However, most of them were non-computer tasks.  I got away from this machine in ways that still felt “productive” – and that was good.  Keeper idea.

What have you been noticing this week? What experiments have turned out to be keeper ideas for you?

Choosing a less apologetic story.

A favorite piece of wedding planning advice is this: don’t worry too much about things not going according to plan. Unless it’s big and obvious, we’re not going to notice. Those of us watching won’t know the difference because we don’t know the plan.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how that applies to business and creative work. How the habit of putting something out into the world with explanation and apology is another form of perfectionism.

Here. I hope you like it. It it was supposed to be blue. Sorry.”

Which is just too much information.  Unless the thing is actually about the creative process, I’m not convinced that sharing all the choices that were rejected (for whatever reasons) is all that helpful to the recipients.

Now your disappointment is their doubt.

Why burden them with that?
Now it’s not just about receiving a gift from you, they have to respond to your sense of shortcoming.

Why weigh yourself down with that?
Now it’s not just about sharing your gifts, you have to cope with your sense of shame and guilt they are insufficient.

Makes me tired just to think about it.

So it’s not blue. That’s probably okay. (The next one can be blue. That there is more to do is a good thing.)

It’s enough. You are enough. I am enough. It’s all good enough.

I am practicing remembering that. Every day.
I am practicing not being so very attached to my plans.
And I am practicing sharing what I do without telling such an apologetic story.

It feels like bravado. There is an element of fake-it-til-you-make-it. But I know that’s temporary. It’s just the ordinary discomfort of learning something new. And it’s important that I keep at it.

Because we choose our stories about ourselves. They have a big influence on us and those around us, so it’s important to choose wisely.

Was it really procrastination?

It all began with the holiday weekend. Or so I thought. Just long enough to unplug, but not long enough to recharge (wait, that sounds backwards – but you know what I mean).  Between my vacation hangover and the ongoing very lovely weather, I had a difficult time focusing on priorities last week. I just wanted to play play play.

Those priorities are kinda big hairy dealios right now. A bit intimidating. A bit overwhelming in scope. So I also knew in my heart of hearts, that play play play was also about avoidance. I called it balance. I called it pacing myself. But that was not entirely truthful.

Anna Deavere Smith defines procrastination as active avoidance: “We think of the procrastinator as lazy and inactive, but procrastination is active.”

So then I actively avoided those priorities by cleaning the house.

One way you can tell how often you need to do something is to not do it and wait to see how long it takes for problems to show up. Not a big crisis, just problems. And you know your house is way too dirty if you are so distracted by the filth that you choose vacuuming over a looming project deadline.

And you know what? It helped. I’m always surprised how much recreating a sense of order in my environment helps me to feel more ordered in my mind.

I spent much of the last several days cleaning, clearing, ordering and organizing – taking care of neglected to-do’s that taunted me every time I looked at them, the tasks that kept nagging at me.  I’m not talking about spring cleaning the nooks and crannies here. Just the big stuff that felt in the way.  Dirty carpets, grosser toilet, piles of laundry, bookkeeping, yard work, overfull in-box, paper piles and filing, grocery shopping (yes, there was food disarray, too). It was a like a four-day Bite the Candy session.

And I guess that stuff was in the way. Because I feel much more clear-headed now. I can focus without all that distraction of … what? piles, dirt, disorder… guilt? an overwhelming sense of being behind on everything?

Basically, I did a lot of maintenance. Not glamorous stuff. It never seems high priority. But what happens when it’s neglected, it’s impact on what is most important (those big hairy dealios) points to just how crucial it is.

So was heeding my impulse to play, to take care of maintenance (which I suppose play could be considered a form of) a foolish choice of active avoidance given my deadlines and commitments? or a smart move?

Because the “high priority” work was not getting done. Maybe I was feeling too much anxiety about it. Whatever the reason, sometimes you just can’t force it. And while focusing on a task to the exclusion of all else can sometimes be very effective, there’s nothing worse than having a task hold everything else up because your stuck on that one thing.

Flow begets flow. Motion, any motion, creates momentum.

I still don’t feel completely “caught up” – that I’m in sync with my schedule – but I’m moving again without having to overcome all the resistance I was feeling last week. This week things feel doable. In that light, I have to conclude: smart move.

Sometimes you have to come at your work sideways instead of head on.

Work According to the Seasons

I’m a big fan of adapting my work schedule according to the seasons.

Winter is a time for dormancy – to get quiet, listen, rest, repair, and prepare for the return of spring. Spring and fall tend to busy times of creation. But summer? Summer is to be savored.

It’s a time to take a break from so much doing, but not in the way winter is. It’s a time to make shifts that allow me to really enjoy the bounty of it all. It’s a time to play.

[ I mean, it's just going to ag me to be stuck at my desk on a beautiful warm sunny day, so why set myself up for that? ]

I suppose some would feel more in sync with all that ripens in the coming months by being equally productive. But for me, it’s a time to be nourished and replenished before another season of doing by all the warmth, light, fresh produce, outdoor events, travel, fellowship and fun that is summer.

I’ve just started reading Waverly Fitzgerald’s book Slow Time, which I love so much I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to buy all of her Natural Planners and Holiday Packets (and maybe even make it required reading for my time management course! okay maybe not, just highly recommended).  I’ve more or less intuitively found my way to adjusting my schedule throughout the year, but it’s so great to have found a resource that affirms and expands so intelligently on that impulse, and healing one’s relationship with time in general. Check out her School of the Seasons and be inspired as I have.

How are you making the most of whatever the change in seasons means to you? Instead of trying to pack yet more into your schedule, how can you make adjustments that allow you to really savor the delights of summer?