VISION

A few days after Christmas, I kept seeing a bunch of positive memes about how it is okay to do nothing for the last week of the year. I tried really hard to take those words to heart, but I’m not good at doing absolutely nothing. As I laid in bed early last Sunday morning, I was already thinking about how I should not spend the day on the couch. Except my motivation for doing the things I believed needed to be done, was pretty low. So, I sat on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and cried into my coffee because it was their ‘People We’ve Lost in 2020’ episode. Then I got up and cleaned out my closet so I could justify spending the rest of the day on the couch. And because I can’t do nothing while sitting on the couch, I started thinking about vision boards.

I’ve never done a vision board.

Vision boards have been around for quite a while. Oprah made them famous. Women have built blogs and careers helping others build vision boards. There are psychology studies that show how visions boards can help you reach your goals and there are psychology studies showing how vision boards can hinder you in reaching goals. It’s a thing. It’s a thing I never really gravitated to, but I am not one for cutting out pictures and pasting them to poster board. I did enough poster making crap in my youth, but I’ve just spent a year where my plans got derailed. I’ve started giving away the prints I framed for my art showing and we have talked about hanging the rest somewhere in the house. When plans got derailed, I couldn’t really make new ones. Last year was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of year. This year? This year I think things are going to be a little bit different. I think we can make plans in moderation.

Still…I do not cut things out of magazines and paste them to poster board. Instead, and I felt really environmentally proud of myself for this idea, I decided to make myself a digital vision board. I spent my Sunday afternoon, nestled under a pile of blankets and animals, dragging photos and images onto a blank screen in one of my drawing apps on my iPad. When I felt like my vision board was complete, I posted that crap to Instagram because…well…just because. I needed a witness? I don’t know, but now I look at the vision board and shake my head. There are two pictures of things on that board that I am not already doing. One is a picture of the Grand Canyon because that trip is happening this summer. We are dragging the Cabbage to the Grand Canyon and about five other National Parks in Utah whether she likes it or not. I have no idea how I have made it through forty five years of life with out ever visiting the Grand Canyon. We went all over the place in a camper when I was I kid. Our three week adventure to Florida was epic, filled with moments like Dad driving into a restricted area at the space center and nine foot alligators and Mom’s constant panic about how far out into the ocean we were swimming. Too far. We were always out too far. The camper could not go farther than the Colorado border. We flew to California. We flew to Hawaii…because you can’t drive the camper there, duh, but we never drove West of Colorado. This year, I’m driving West of Colorado.

The other picture is one of a row of small kitchen gardens. I only want one of those rectangular kitchen gardens. I have approximately the same size garden bed right outside the back door. It currently houses oregano, sage, rosemary, I think what might be a citronella plant and half of the leaves from our neighbor’s tree. This was the first summer when I did not have to replant the rosemary. I definitely do not use enough of any of these herbs and they could stand to be thinned out and moved around. That space would be nice for some greens and maybe a tomato plant, a few things we can eat. It would still be small and very manageable. The chickens will eat the the stuff we don’t eat. It’s a win win for everyone. Besides the garden and the Grand Canyon though, those are the only ‘plans’ I can vision up for this year. The rest of those pictures, the yoga, the exercise, the reading and photography, are all the things I am currently doing. An organized desk drawer? I did that last week. Either I suck at creating a vision board or I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

Shut. Up.

A friend of mine turned forty last year and she lamented the loss of her youth. I said to her “No no no. Forty is wonderful. It is the age where you truly stop giving a shit about all the unimportant little things.” It’s true. It’s like dumping baggage. Ever since I turned forty, I feel like I have been dumping luggage like that scene in The Darjeeling Limited as they run to catch a train. Big clunky luggage, the kind without wheels, just dropping away as each year passes. Last year, I lost a trunk filled with all the plans I have ever made for my life. I have always been a planner, mapping out my life since childhood. I will do this, this and then this, all in that order and I was never prepared for the events that fell outside of that plan. And they did! So many events that I never planned for! Of course, some of those events were terrible, horrific even, but so many of them were good. I never planned for Chris to show up in my life or this great family of friends that I have. I didn’t plan on Michael being a permanent fixture. I didn’t plan on having a dog that I would fall so deeply in love with that sometimes it hurts. There is just so much goodness in my life that I never ever planned on having.

So really, I guess my vision board for this year is to keep on doing what I’m doing and living a life less planned. Happy New Year to you all.

WHAT TO WRITE WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE

Path

0 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Path"

Two nights ago, I dreamed that I had made three purchases: a new case for my iPhone, socks, and a yellow highlighter. I was also at some scientific conference with a group of coworkers and my boss was walking around with a leather satchel filled with scientific papers and silverware. He had enough forks, spoons and butter knives for a dinner party of 20. The new case for my phone was the wrong size. It was the correct width, but twice as long as the actual phone. The socks were meant to be crew cut, but turned out to be short ankle socks. The yellow highlighter would only work if I was highlighting in a left to right motion.

I can explain the part about the new case and the socks. That very same day I had this dream, I traded my old iPhone for the new iPhone (camera) that involved two Best Buy stores and a tech guy with a wandering eye. I ordered a new case as soon as we got home, but the one that I want is not currently in stock. I will not get my case until (fingers crossed) some time next week. Michael has told me at least four times a day since to not break my phone. Neither of us want to step into a Best Buy any time soon. Except Michael has to because he bought a TV antenna that doesn’t work any better than the one we already have. Now for the sock mishap; that’s easy. I bought some socks online for Michael’s birthday present and they ended up being the right size, but the wrong style. As it turns out, I can only order the right size, which is 13, in an ankle sock. I returned the socks and ordered the crew style even though they will be a size too small.

This is why his socks have holes in all the toes.

I cannot explain why my boss had so much silverware on him other than he always seems to be eating. If you are the constant eating type, you might find it handy to have your own silverware on you in case of a food emergency. I don’t think this particular part of my dream was anything more than the weird thing that ends up in dreamland. It is not significant. The yellow highlighter though may be significant. The significant part has something to do with how the highlighter would only work if I was moving from left to right. I know that it makes sense to be moving a highlighter from left to right, but some times I don’t. Some times I move back and forth over half of a paragraph, painting the words with bright yellow paint. “Pay attention to this part!” I scream inside my head as I move violently back and forth with the highlighter, in some attempt to keep that information in my brain. If the paper I am reading is particularly challenging, I may end up coloring the whole damn thing. Which is not helpful. It just means I don’t understand the science.

Yes. There are many many many times I do not understand the science. That’s why I read and re-read stuff and talk with other scientists. I take apart the information in a paper so I can reconstruct how they came about the information to build the paper. Then, I might understand the science, but I don’t think the highlighter is about understanding or memory. I think it’s trying to tell me something about direction. Moving left to right moves you down a pace. Moving left to right, then right to left just takes you back to where you started. Maybe what annoys me about that highlighter only working in one direction is that I am so used to moving back and forth, circling back to the same thoughts, actions and habits and never really moving away from the destructive ones. Whatever I am working towards is only going to work if I move mindfully in one direction. These are the things I am working on now, before I feel the need to make it a New Year’s resolution. I don’t want New Year’s resolutions.

I want Life resolutions.

THE BARE NECESSITIES

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

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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. 

FOCUS

Tilt shift

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I know it is still early to be thinking about the new year, but next week is Thanksgiving and that means November is practically over. I'll be traveling to San Francisco the first week of December for a conference. Then I'll stay a few extra days to hang out with my friend Heather. I think there's a cabin in the woods thing that's going to happen. I'm sure there's going to be lots of laughing happening. Laughing happening. I like that. Any hoo, I know December will roll through in a blink and I'll be staring 2017 right in the eye. I want to be able to do that staring with a fierce intensity while puffing out my chest and saying 'bring it!'.  Many of us may feel the same way after the shitty shit storm of 2016. 

There are some specific things I would like to focus on in the next year. Not really resolutions, just some self improvement and life improvement things. The usual. I've been wasting a whole lot of time scrolling through facebook lately. I find that any time I'm looking at a blank page or the start of the next sentence, I end up opening facebook instead of just looking at a blank page or figuring out that next sentence. I use it to fill the moments in between moments, maybe because I'm bored, maybe just to use it as a distraction. I don't know, because I'm not really reading anything there as much as I'm just scrolling through looking at ridiculous pictures and shaking my head at all the fake news headlines that I see people posting. I have resisted the urge to say "you people will believe anything." more times than I can count. Yet, there I am just scrolling on through it and it is dumb. I have exceeded the appropriate amount of time one should be wasting in that space. 

So, for the next year, I'd like to focus less with online wastefulness and more time behind my camera lens, more time writing and more time spreading a more positive message. I have been talked into doing a yoga workshop on the use of yoga straps. I'm planning this for February or at least having a class plan by February. This is going to require me to dig out my giant teacher binder and doing some refresher research. I don't even know if I remember how to teach a regular class let alone devote two or three hours to teaching a whole workshop, but we're going to find out. I am not backing out or saying no. I am doing this. In the first few months of the next year, I will focus more on yoga and the art of teaching yoga. Then I want to follow this up with a focus on more yoga for my personal life with an emphasis on being healthy (more greens, less cheese). 

Michael's been nudging me to find a way to sell some of my prints, but the truth is I feel like I'm totally faking this photography hobby of mine. I still rely heavily on my iPhone, though I know there's nothing wrong with that, but I have a really nice camera with two really nice lenses. I want to focus on getting to know that camera better. I'm thinking of doing a beginners photography class and giving myself a weekly assignment that I share here. I would also like to get a few photo editing apps on my iPad so I can edit photos while I am traveling. Travel is going to be another big focus for next year, not just for me but for Michael as well. We are itching to put miles on the truck and to see the country. And I want to photograph all of it. Maybe then I can think about selling prints, like that could be a focus for 2018.

You guys, I am so close to finishing a story. I don't know what the fate of this story is going to be, but it's something I am finishing. I really really really want to focus on that. I want to focus on finishing something I've started. In fact just writing that sentenced made me feel like anything is possible in 2017, in a good way. What does all this focus mean for the blog? I am hoping it means writing more thoughtful entries. This is the space where I can spread a more positive message and I'm going to work hard at doing that. Also, how else are you guys going to keep up with all our travels. I just want to build a nicer space here. I want to build a nicer space inside my own head and inside my own heart. 

I want to build a nicer space.