THINGS I DON'T DO ON THE WEEKENDS

I don’t check my email on the weekends. I have two gmail accounts, one is the original that I got locked out of for a few weeks. I created a new account when that happened and now the old account is mostly spam/ads/trash with the occasional reminders for a bill or a receipt from Google Fiber. My work email used to be attached to my phone but I never had that set up when I swapped phones two phones ago. In order to get to work emails from home, I have to pass through the security gauntlet that is not unlike getting through all the booby traps to get to the hidden treasure. So I just don’t bother. The gmail account I created while I was locked out of the old one was meant to be a cleaner account but this one has started to get a little junky with the spams. Every Monday morning I open up the email accounts, select everything unread in the promotions folder and delete without thinking twice.

And it feels really good.

I also do not even look at the news until Sunday mornings when CBS Sunday Morning does their little snippet of news at the beginning of the show.

I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to ignore my email accounts on the weekends. I didn’t flash a meme of sitting on the beach with a cold beer and a notice that reads “slams laptop ‘ill Monday” up anywhere. I just stopped checking my email. During the weeks, I am continuously answering to someone in email and/or Teams (stupid Teams). I much prefer face to face conversation and sometimes will ignore a work email and just go find the person who sent it so we can discuss the issue. This continued answering to people doesn’t just apply to work. There are doctor’s notices, Vet visit reminders, bill notices and the countless daily things that must be taken care of to keep the lights on. When I’m not answering to people, I’m keeping my self accountable by staying informed with worldly news and checking to see how my representatives are representing me with bills they are voting (or not voting) on. In my case, it’s about 50/50 on which rep is doing a decent job for this state. (I did just have to send out an email to our Attorney General, defending Planned Parenthood).

A Chookooloonks newsletter was waiting for me in my inbox this morning and in it Karen Walrond wrote of the importance of self compassion. Treating yourself with compassion should be a daily practice, not something you do when you’ve completely depleted yourself. Karen is not talking about spa days. She writes of small, simple actions like dancing or stopping to take pictures of wildflowers and how these actions help sustain us in our activism, particularly when there is so much that needs doing right now (any one see the recycling segment on CBS Sunday Morning this week?). The state of things is overwhelming and reminding myself that change happens in micrometers starting with my own community is my daily mantra, but I never really stopped and thought about the little actions I take daily that gives me the energy to write the letters and make the phone calls.

I often stop to take photos of flowers and it is not uncommon to look over at my cubicle and see me dancing like banshee. The no emails or news on weekends are just two small things I do as self compassion. I just didn’t realize it until now.

TALK DIRTY TO ME

We recently watched Nick Kroll’s latest Netflix standup special, Little Big Boy. It was the kind of comedy special that had something for everyone and one of the few that the Cabbage has watched all the way through with us. Usually they disappear around the half way mark because usually that’s when the comedian choses to use their sexually explicit material. I don’t blame them. There’s many a comedian that Michael subjects us too that I don’t think is funny, but Nick Kroll’s special was pretty funny and relatable. He has this bit where he talks to himself using what he likes to believe is Jason Statham voice. He has these talks while staring at himself in a mirror and one would like to think they’re pep talks, but they are not. His inner Jason Statham says the most horrible things to Nick. It was so bad that at one point I looked at Michael and said “I thought I trash talked myself, but this guy wins in self trash talk.”

Really, I was appalled but also very impressed.

This week, I’ve been working on my color coded Google calendar in attempt to make it a little more honest. The 5:30 AM wake up call is not happening right now because it’s cold and dark and I’m in full on hibernation mode. When the weather changed over to not bearable outside weather, I kept the dog walk time on the calendar thinking I would still get up and get on my yoga mat. That hasn’t happened except maybe once or twice. Did I mention that it’s cold and dark and that I am a hibernating animal? As I removed that color block from my calendar, I expected to hear something from my inner trash talker, but instead another voice spoke up and said “remove something else!” Then I just started deleting all of the things that are on my calendar that are intentions and added the things that are set in stone dates, like doctors appointments and planned weekend events.

Then I took it all one step further. There are large salmon colored blocks on my calendar for Monday through Friday labelled ‘work’. That’s it. No details about what that ‘work’ is or scheduled work related things. Just work. Last year I noticed that I was double booking myself for things at work, scheduling training times for people when I had promised to help someone else on a different microscope. That kind of thing. Part of this has something to do with microscope availability, but a lot of it has something to do with my inability to say no. I’m all “no worries, I can do it all.” This is false. So, I looked at my week and the actual scheduled things in my work day and started making more salmon colored blocks to overlay the work block. Salmon is the color I’ve chosen for work related things. I don’t know why. It is not my favorite color. I’ve saved that color for things that I really like doing, not that I don’t like my job. I like my job about 90% of the time. I enjoy the color of salmon about the same amount.

This isn’t about colors.

This is about recognizing the time spent doing things, and by golly, I do things. Lots of things. I think I’m doing nothing or very little, but I am doing a lot of things. Sure there’s a chunk of time between 5:00 PM and 8:45 PM that has nothing scheduled, but I haven’t gotten around to adding ‘make/eat dinner’, ‘clean kitchen’, ‘get lunch together for the next day’, and ‘sit on my butt on the couch watching TV’ to the calendar. It’s not always TV; sometimes I’m reading. Anyway. I haven’t added ‘free time’ to my calendar and I look at those empty time slots and see them as moments when I can do what ever the fuck I want. And this is where my inner trash talker wants to start in.

Who do I think I am to think I have time for sitting on my butt doing nothing?

I’ll tell you who I think I am. I am the person that had to explain to someone that they cannot use this particular microscope to image 560 and 594 at the same time because they cannot be spectrally separated. I am the person that sat down with a graduate student and confirmed fluorescent signal before setting up a twenty four slide batch imaging run. I am the person who taught a chair yoga class during lunch and then ate lunch at my desk while reading an article titled “Integration of whole transcriptome spatial profiling with protein markers”. I was the person to clean out the pool of oil someone left in a 20x air objective so someone else could actually use it. And if you don’t understand even half of the things I’ve just listed above, then at the very least you understand that ‘work’ means WORK.

My inner trash talker barely even exists.

FILL IN THE BLANK

As we get closer to Christmas and the end of the year, I find it difficult to write anything. It’s like my brain just goes to battery saving mode and partially shuts down. I do things like tell myself how I’ll take care of this or that after the new year or I’ll buckle down in January. The truth is, January (and February really) is just my usual time to buckle, period. I have made some plans and some goals for next year. I signed myself up for a year of self care with a Self Care Circle led by a friend I made through camp. Rose is a Self Care Advocate, massage therapist and yoga teacher. I am not really sure what to expect from this journey, but she made me fill out an application that was filled with difficult questions. I answered each one with complete honesty, hit the submit button and then threw up. This Self Care Circle thing is way outside my comfort zone, but I’m hoping that it holds me accountable for some things I want to do.

Secret things.

Really…isn’t that part of my problem? Keeping some of my plans and bad habits a secret means that this audience can’t hold me accountable for not working on the plan or quitting the bad habit. There’s no one but me and my Catholic guilt habit to hold myself accountable or nudging me to keep going. If I don’t tell you the things I want to do and change, you won’t be disappointed when I don’t do the thing or make the change. One of the questions on the application had something to do with where you saw yourself this time next year. My answer was that I really wanted to be submitting a writing piece to a publisher. This is legit true. This is want I want. I want to stop talking about one day writing a book and actually write the goddamn book. I’ve started on it. I have notes and an outline. I am creating a list of people I want to interview for this project. I can do this.

But I’m going to need some nudging along the way.

I do plan on posting my annual slideshow, but from now until January, don’t expect to see much over here. I am allowing myself to have this break, to let half of my brain go into power saving mode. Because I am going to need my whole brain for 2022. May you all have a safe, healthy, and joyful Holiday.

CHANGE OF FOCUS

When I purchased the new camera, I had set an intention to take it out for Friday walks, but then the weather turned wonky or my schedule was weird. Friday walks just didn’t happen for a few weeks. Last Friday, between meetings, I pulled my stocking cap down over my ears and zipped up my coat. I grabbed my camera and I stepped outside to walk. The effect of just stepping outside with that camera and the intention to use that camera was almost a manic feeling. I shifted from blase depression to elation in a blink of an eye. My face nearly broke with joy as I made my way up to the Nelson. Really, Kansas City is at its peak gorgeousness right now. The weather is not supposed to get cold until later this week, but the leaves have all turned. I can’t go a block without coming across what has to be the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. Then I walk a few steps down the block and there’s a new contender for the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen.

Once I reached the sculpture park of the Nelson, I was pleased to find it mostly deserted. I had the park all to myself and at one point I was laying on the ground to get a particular shot and I thought “this is going to be a wonderful picture.” Even if the final picture wasn’t wonderful, at the moment of taking it, I felt really good. I felt like I was really doing something. I felt good about my craft and my art and these feelings stayed with me throughout my walk. By the time I made it back to my desk, I was a little sweaty and a lot glowy. The first thing I did was connect the camera to my phone for downloading and minor editing. That picture may not be the best picture I’ve ever taken but I still feel really good about it. Even if the final image had turned out like complete crap, I would have been happy with it because the whole action of taking the picture shifted something around in my insides.

In a good way.

A few years ago, I found my unathletic self agreeing to play softball for the corporate challenge. They made me the catcher mostly because I could hang out in a squat for long periods of time thanks to all of that yoga I do. It definitely was not because I was good at catching a ball. Just before our first game, our pitcher was warming up and he threw me a test pitch. The ball bounced up out of my glove into my face. I immediately stood up and started poking my front teeth to make sure they were still intact. Everyone ran to my side and someone said something about it would be okay if I sat this one out. I determined that I still had teeth, spit the blood out of my mouth and said “No. Let’s play this game.” My top lip swelled up and turned purple. Later, when I got home, Michael told me that it upset him to look at me. I can still feel a faint scar on the inside of my upper lip, probably because I needed stitches.

I was thinking about this recently because it feels like a good example of my life in general. I get hit hard, but I always manage to get up, spit the blood from my mouth and keep going. I feel like I have been taking some minor hits lately what with the scooter and the couch. My knee. My health in general. All of those little hits had started to pile up and I was beginning to feel a whole lot defeated. I needed something more than to just keep going. Friday evening, while sitting on that uncomfortable couch drinking too much wine, I told Heather and Michael that I wanted to go to the Vespa dealership and I was going to order exactly what I wanted. I said “this weekend we find a new couch and next weekend I’m getting a new scooter because I’m a grown ass woman with my own money and I’m going to get what I want!” I don’t know how much of that confident statement came from the wine or from my walk that day, but I like to think the walk played a significant role.

We had plans to go couch shopping on Saturday after getting our hairs cut. While I was waiting for our hairdresser to finish up with Michael, the people we ordered the couch from called me. They said our couch was in Chicago, which was exactly where they said it was in July, and would be delivered to our house this week. I finalized the delivery date and hung up the phone. Then I looked at Michael and said “Our couch is going to be delivered on Friday. Can we go to the Vespa dealer?” He agreed heartily after I bribed him with lunch at a BBQ place and by the end of the day, I had picked out my new scooter. Velma is a mint green (Verde Relaxed) Primavera 150 with front and back folding racks. Hopefully. There’s still a question of if the dealer has this scooter in stock, but with any luck I will have a new scooter just in time for my birthday. (Update: scooter has been ordered for real.)

The getting up and keep going part is not self care. I was doing those things on autopilot, moving through my days like a zombie. It was the act of getting out into the Fall sunlight and overloading my senses with color that changed things. It was the practice of picking up my camera and actively taking photos that took my off of autopilot. That is my self care and hopefully by writing this here, I’ll remember that for the next time I need a shift in focus.