GOALS

First day of Fall

3 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "First day of Fall"

Every time someone reserves time on one of our microscopes, I receive an email informing me of their reservation. The reservations coming into mailbox this week are for dates in October and it keeps freaking me out. First of all we have a two week rule. You cannot book earlier than two weeks in advance. So I see that reservation and start to yell “Hey! You can’t reserve a microscope two weeks in advance!” and I’m all ready to send out a polite but severe email. Then I pause and go “oh….wait…”

October is next fucking week, people!

What happened to summer? Or spring for that matter? How is it the first of Fall and the leaves are suddenly changing colors and it’s cold enough in the mornings that I have to wear a jacket and gloves on the scooter? What do I even do with my time? I feel like I’m wasting so dang much of it on all the wrong stuff. I’M WASTING MY LIFE! I feel like I’m not tapping into my full potential and so I started looking into some sort of daily planner. I found one that I like that has a digital format that I would be able to use on my iPad. This would allow me to use my Apple pen to write and color in stuff. There’s a place at the beginning of each month to write out your goals for that month. The calendar opens for the week with a section for writing out tasks for home and work. Then at the end of each month, there’s a place to evaluate where you are with your goals. Did you accomplish them? If not, why? What can you try differently? That sort of thing.

There’s a lot of appeal to having a digital planner like this. First of all, I would have it with me all the time. I carry my iPad with me most days. I’ve gotten in the habit of writing out my yoga classes in a notebook app and I use the meditation timer for both class and my own practice. The digital planner/calendar would encourage me to use my electronic device in other ways. Other than the yoga classes, the iPad is basically a glorified e-reader/TV. I could be doing a lot more with it. The downside is that the digital planner is not free. It is a one time fee and not a subscription, but it’s still not free. I am hesitant to purchase something I may not use. Then again, I might see it as I would a gym membership: if I’m paying for it, I will use it. Maybe that’s the real reason for hesitating. If I buy it and use it, then I will actually have a written record of the things I’m doing or not doing. Most importantly, a record of the things I failed to do each month. A record of failure. Do I need to spend $40 on that? Or can I just drag out my high school yearbook or all those 4-H record books and throw a pity party for one? Actually…I can’t do that because I threw all of that stuff away when we cleaned out the old house.

I could spin this argument of for and against into a tangle.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. - Brene Brown

I’m getting the damn planner. Sure, it might end up as a record of my failures, but it will also be a record of all of my success.

THE BARE NECESSITIES

I have the worst hangover but Indian Food on New Year's Day tradition is making me human again

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 6 likes

Well, it's officially January and a new year. It's that time when everyone starts talking about getting healthy, losing weight, getting organized and quitting bad habits. Resolutions. You guys know me. I'm not one for making resolutions, more like "I'll trys", but this year I'm not even sure I'm ready to make those. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few months. Sure there are things I want to work on like photography and getting rid of things that do not serve me well.  Writing, writing, writing. I should get a new prescription for my eyeglasses so I can see street signs. I most certainly need a boob check ( I skipped it this year) and a freckle check (I've got to stop looking at every spot on my arm and thinking it's cancer). I did a lot of traveling in 2016 without Michael. I'd like to fix that in 2017. These are simple things, the usual things, that I talk about doing every year. 

New Year's Eve, a group of us were sitting down to dinner and Terry said something about ending the night by having naked pictures of us all. Michael told Terry that there are already naked pictures of me out there. I looked them up for Terry to see and everyone at the table admired the photos. I took those photos almost ten years ago. Michael commented later that I am smaller now then when I took those pictures. I could not disagree with him, yet it has been years since I have exposed myself in front of a camera. This is not about nudey pictures or pornography. It is about having a certain kind of confidence or boldness. I realized as I looked through those old pictures that at some point between then and now, I have lost that confidence and that boldness. I can't even consider myself to be all that brave any more because I never really put myself into a position that requires it. 

So this year, I'm breaking my own rules about resolutions. I resolve to get up every morning with the intention of being my best self. I resolve to ask myself three questions at the end of the day: What have I done to brighten someone's day today? Have I actively listened to those around me? What have I done to brighten my day today? I want to be able to answer those questions with good answers and not just with an "I don't know". I resolve to regain some of that confidence and boldness that I used to have. I resolve to allow myself to be in a position where I can possibly fail and I resolve to allow failure to happen. This means creating a yoga workshop that no one may attend, building a shop for my photos that no one may buy and handing out my personal business cards while knowing that they are just going to get thrown in the garbage. It also means finishing some writing projects that no one may ever read. 

I've always felt that resolutions are just setups for failure. Maybe it's time to let myself fail a little. 

THE GAME OF RISK

Mornings are mine

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

Yesterday morning, I checked my weather app on my phone. There was a 20% chance of rain dropping to 0% after eight AM. I didn't look outside or stick my head out the door. I took it on blind faith that the weather report on my phone was accurate. I rolled the scooter out of the garage and looked up at an ominous sky. There was a moment of hesitation as I wrapped my scarf around my neck and zipped up my jacket. The weather app may have said 20%, but the sky was saying "It's probably going to rain on you". I took a deep breath, looked warily at the clouds and decided to risk it. 

Fearless is a word that has been used plenty of times to describe me. Sure, I can play the part of fearless or pretend well enough to make it look legit. But risky? Am I a risk taker? Does being fearless make you a risk taker? I've taken risks. One time Stephanie and I skipped school. There was absolutely no reason I had to actually skip. I was a straight A student who never ever got in trouble. If there was a day I didn't feel like going to school, Mom usually said "OK". For some reason that day Steph and I said screw it and decided to not go back after lunch (we still had off campus lunch). Of course we got caught. It was the one time we did something against the rules. We both served six days of detention which all the teachers thought was hilarious because neither one of us had ever EVER been on a detention list. I can't really tell you why we did it or why I didn't just call mom and have her get me out of it. We didn't do anything outrageous. We watched a movie on cable TV. A regular movie. Not porn. But we skipped school and took the risk of getting caught and then we handled the consequences of getting caught. No big deal. 

Every time I went on a first date, I was taking a risk. Then there was that one time I went on that one date which was probably not the smartest date to go on. Michael has heard the story of this date. He still, out of no where some times, will look at me say "what the Hell where you thinking?!?!". I just shrug. What he doesn't realize is that I was taking a risk with any of the dates I went on. I took a risk by going on a date with him. I continued to take risks where our relationship is concerned. I gave him a second try. I moved him into my house. All of that was risky. To take a risk is to accept the consequences of failure. We are not afraid of risk. We are afraid of failure. Sir Ken Robinson tells this story in his Ted talk, How Schools Kill Creativity. It's my favorite story about a little girl drawing a picture of God. When the teacher tells her that no one knows what God looks like, the little girl replies "they will in a minute". Brilliant. Ken (if I can call him Ken or maybe Sir) goes on to talk about how children take risks all the time because they don't know that they can fail. At some point we are taught that we can fail and we can fail miserably . 

So we stop taking risks in life, in creativity, in love. We stop taking risks for happiness, for joy. Because what if? What if no one likes my art? What if things don't work out with this person? What if no one wants to read my words? What if the sky opens up and pours buckets on me while I'm riding my scooter to work? I can remember a time I allowed all of those what ifs to root me to the ground and not in a grounded centered yoga way, but in a trapped paralyzed kind of way. Oh the things I missed out on, even the failures, because sometimes even totally amazing things come from failing.

So, I hopped on my scooter and zipped to work. Not a drop of rain fell on me and by the end of the day, the skies had cleared. I rode home that evening under a crystal clear blue sky. Completely worth the risk.