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.

30 SOMETHING

Someone trashed their 30s

11 Likes, 2 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Someone trashed their 30s"

I did an illegal u-turn so I could take that picture of the trashed balloons. At the time, I found it funny to see someone trashing their thirties. My thirties were great! This was my first thought, but then I remembered my real thirties versus my imaginary thirties. My thirties were a complete shit show. I entered my thirties with a broken family wrecked by loss. When Chris and I celebrated the end of 2005, we celebrated with a real hope that the new year would be better. Then Chris’s Dad’s cancer came back and we entered the years of slogging our way through bogs of grief, depression and despair to find some glimmer of joy.

You know those round water bumper boats with the smelly gas engines. I used to beg to ride those as a kid and every time Dad would relent the money for a ticket, I would end up stuck in a corner going nowhere, just spinning. This describes my early thirties. There was grief on top of grief, living with a mother-in-law who I was constantly struggle to connect with, trying to dig out of debt and just stuck. Spinning in the corner. Next, I would move into a job where I killed mice every day for science. I’d often end my work day crying in a bathroom stall over all the carnage and how science wasn’t fun any more. Then I would watch my best friend deteriorate and die, only to have to repeat that process with my Dad. The rest of my thirties would be spent just trying to figure out how to live my life without that best friend and finding some sense of self. By the time I entered my forties, I felt like a wise old sage. Though, now that I’m in my mid-forties, I feel less wise and more old. Despite the train wreck of my thirties, I wouldn’t throw those years away. In those years, I would acquire the confidence in myself that I never had in my twenties. I don’t mean just a physical confidence, but a mental confidence, a belief in myself. I found that I was really good at teaching yoga and that I loved teaching. Those years brought me my scooter, which has been a constant source of glee. I grew my own vegetables and I made pickles and sauerkraut. I found my writing voice and discovered a creativity that had been locked deep inside me. I started taking my photography more seriously. Chris and I finally did what we always said we were going to do and that was to move out of Oklahoma. I moved into a job that made science fun again and did not leave me crying in the bathroom at the end of a work day. I learned some valuable life lessons in my thirties. Sure, they happened to be punch-in-a-gut hard lessons, but sometimes a lesson has to be difficult in order to really learn it. If it hadn’t been for the shit show that was my thirties, I would not be the woman I am today.

Of course that can be said of any decade. If I could say anything to the birthday celebrant who put those balloons out for trash pickup, it would be to savor and pay attention to every moment. Not just the moments in your thirties. All of the moments. Swim around in the painful moments until your fingers are wrinkly. Really soak those in because those moments make the good moments so so so so good. It’s like the painful moments rip a layer of skin off and the good moments are skin graphs that grow in that space. You might be under the impression that turning thirty will suddenly make you a grownup. That is not true. You will make grownup decisions, probably more of them than you did in the previous ten years of your life, but you will not be a grownup. There is no defining age for being a grownup. This is important because the less you dwell on the concept of being a grownup, the better off you are. I mean, be a grownup when it is absolutely necessary, but all other times allow yourself moments of silliness and play. Have ice cream for dinner. If your gut is telling you to pull the car over to explore some derelict building that looks interesting, do it. There’s a 60% chance of rain forecasted for the day? Ride the scooter anyway; there is a 40% chance it won’t.

And vote. Always vote.