Don’t Have Time?

Throughout my creative meanderings over the years, I’ve run across a couple of good methods for uncovering and creating more time. This includes time for really grungy jobs I avoid at all cost and even peril; and it covers making time for pursuing creative or fun projects, too, a little bit at a time.

Let’s say it’s the end of January and you have received all of your tax information – W2s, mortgage interest paid, dividends, 1099s if you are a freelancer, and so on. You’ve been good. You have thrown all these valuable pieces of paper into a folder marked TAXES 2012. 

And now it’s time to pull out your receipts (those are in a folder, too, right?) and get the stuff organized and delivered to your favorite tax preparer (maybe it’s you). But you know you can save money by entering the receipts into a spreadsheet, and then you have to copy every piece of paper, and the list of to-dos builds. Now you don’t even want to touch that folder.

Here’s what you do. Make a date with yourself, date and exact time, and promise to devote 5 whole minutes to the project. Right, just 5 minutes. Of course, what usually happens is that you’re drawn in and end up working longer. But when you’re done with that task – maybe it was just to get out the tax folder and look at all the information in it – schedule your next micro-movement on the project right then. The next day, later that day, next week. (More about micro-movements below!)

I used to get all my tax folders out, put them in the middle of the living room floor and swear I was going to work on it and complete it in one day. Of course, I ended with a bigger mess because I’d step over and around the folders for days. 

Then I’d put them back and continue this dance until the first week in April. No tax preparer can complete your taxes by April 15 after you fooled around for so long, so then an extension is filed. Need I say anything about the guilt, the shame, the anxiety? No, I didn’t think so.

I love micro-movements for getting jobs like that completed in small, edible chunks. And it can be applied to things you actually want to do but have some issues like fear, failure, shame going on.

I learned about micro-movements from the incredible SARK – Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy. I learned from her juicy books about how NOT to be a starving artist, but to be an artist with mojo and completed projects. I advise signing up for her little letters of inspiration (she calls them Tiny Tidbits), so short but so succulent and fabulous. The micro-movement lesson from SARK has stayed with me for years and I do pull it out in desperate times to complete ugly, overwhelming tasks. Ah!

Here’s another method for buying yourself time. I want to sign up for the novel-writing project in November, NaNoWriMo. The goal is 50,000 words written by November 30. I divided 50,000 by 30 and came up with 1,667 words each day. 

Well, how long does that actually take to do? I discovered that I write 438 words in 20 minutes. That means I have to write four 20-minute chunks each day to meet that goal. Oh, that’s one hour and 20 minutes of writing every day to write a novel in a month. Wow, I can do that! 

I just bought myself some time, identified it, and made the project seem completely doable. I don’t think about “50,000 words” or even “1,667 words.” Just the next 20-minute chunk. And that can be scheduled as a micro-movement to do something I cherish.

I could stretch out the novel-writing to just four months by writing only 20 minutes a day on it. At the end of whatever timeframe I commit to, I will have a first draft of a novel. That’s astounding, I hear you saying. 

Can you apply that same method of measuring and dividing out your time into doable chunks for your schedule now? Don’t you have a dream you’d like to pursue? (If you haven’t already, read my last post, Who Needs a Dream? These two methods will remove some of your fear and trepidation, and will get your mojo cranked up and running – daily.)

I urge you to try out the micro-movements for fun or dreadful tasks, and to create in small 15 to 20-minute chunks. Set your goals and make a commitment. Then go for it.

Life is supposed to have its pleasures, satisfactions, fulfillments. Please don’t allow dragging your feet and feeling overwhelmed stop you from following your dreams. Please let me know how you’re doing with your pursuits ­ or even the nasty jobs. How do you think these methods will work for you?

Who Needs a Dream?

I can never copy someone else’s dreams and make them my own. I have my own dream for myself. So do you, dear reader.

You may think you don’t have a dream and daily life is enough for you. But you might also have a message you stumble across every few months, and it’s the same one you stepped around six months before. Why does that keep bugging me, you ask impatiently. I don’t have time for that. I’m busy. And I like my life the way it is. Works for me, you say.

But the nagging continues. For years. Yes, years. Dreams are made of indestructible material. They come from your soul which is eternal. Why should they go away just because you want to shovel dirt over your dream for a few years? The dream keeps whispering.

Well, why doesn’t it shout, you ask, now impatient with this dream and soul business. It doesn’t go away because it needs your willingness, your heart, your whole being to believe in it and act on it. Shouting would be mean, and dreams are about love and joy and passion.

Oh, occasionally you will get a shout-out moment of clarity and detail. And some people can go with that and start right in on their path. The shout-out moments can be useful later as reminders that the Whole Enchilada is not only possible, but it’s the only thing you want to do.

If you have no shout-outs, there are methods you can use to encourage the whisper of your dreams to speak up a little louder, more frequently, and help you form a plan of sorts.

 •

• Love yourself. Endlessly, no holding back, when it seems the darkest and least probable moment, and you appear your least lovable. Love anyway. It’s the only way you can receive and then give the love that your dream brings to you.
•  
• Take time to listen. Even if you just get up five or ten minutes early to silently contemplate your day and give yourself some extra hugs, or promise during your time in the shower to be open with your whole heart and mind. Wherever, whenever, however you choose, listen regularly. Maybe only Monday and Thursday mornings, or at lunch, or a special break by yourself on those two days of the week. Be present for you.
•  
• If you hear a repeating theme, write it down somewhere. And then add to it as more feeling and more information is imparted to you. You might be reading something and a phrase or just a word leaps off the page or screen at you. Add it to your special writing nook. Visiting your written words has power and energy and juice for you. Do it for you. Do it for your dream, struggling to be seen and befriended.
•  

Always remember that you have a special, a unique song to sing, story to tell, life to live here in this life, on this planet, in this time you are alive. It is uniquely you. No one else can tell that story or sing that song. It is yours. And that is what the whispering is all about.

Find others to talk with about this stuff. You know, the ones who won’t look at you like you’re crazy when you say you hear your dreams whispering to you. The ones who talk about their dreams, who tell the secrets of finding the way to dreams. 

They might be a close friend, or maybe the author of a book you picked up. 

Find inspiration. You need it for the journey. It replenishes you when you start doubting but still want to find your way back to the joy, the fun, life, you.

Sleeplessness and Its Discontents

I read a novel years ago called Fatelessness, written by a Nobel Prize winner – a fictional account of his experience as a 15-year-old Polish Jewish boy in Auschwitz and other death camps. One surefire way to torture prisoners is with sleep deprivation.

I am not fateless, but I am sleepless. My lack of slumber arises from many contributing factors.

The first one is the liver disease I have (primary sclerosing cholangitis or PSC). Doctors and scientists don’t know why this symptom raises its ugly head, but it is observed in, and experienced by, many patients with PSC.

Another factor is my age. Lots of older people develop sleep problems as they age. They don't get their 40 winks the way they used to.

One more factor I’ve got weighing against me is the form of chemotherapy I’m going through as a result of the type of breast cancer I had (estrogen-induced). To hold back recurrence, I take a tiny pill daily that sucks out all the estrogen from my body. Therefore, I am going through a second menopause; the lack of estrogen causes little drowsiness and lots of hyperactivity.

So, combined, these factors add up to a pretty strong physical inclination towards lack of adequate dozing at night.

I make up for some of the loss with afternoon naps, usually two hours long. Last night I stole about 10 winks of snoozing – about two hours. Most nights it’s closer to four or five hours (or about 30 winks).

I feel crazy in the middle of the night, like jump-out-of-my-skin crazy. I don’t know what to do with myself. My cat is lolling about on the bed with me – stomach, back, side – kicking out long, loud purrs. And I watch her with such envy. 

Long novels help. They don’t put me to sleep, but they distract me from thinking of taking more drastic measures. I don’t like the craziness; it even frightens me. But no matter how the night goes, at around 5 a.m. I return to a more normal state of mind. I’m not sure why this happens, but I’m terribly grateful it does.

I feel ready to add more structure to my day to help solve or ease the sleeplessness. I’m also going next week to see a biofeedback therapist and pry some help from him.

What tortures me most? The utter and complete ease I used to have with slumbering. Anywhere, any time, on any surface. The perfect amount, and if interrupted, quickly made up very soon. That was then. This is now. I hope my fate is to add more sleepfulness to my nights.

Three Reasons Not to Have a Bucket List

Wait, everyone has a bucket list, right? You have one, don’t you?

I don’t have one and here are the three reasons why I don’t and why you should give yours up.

First, you should live a good daily life. That’s right. Every day you should be living your bucket list. Who says you will even get through No. 1 on your list, if you have a list of ten things or places? Why aren’t you living it today?

Shortly after I was diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (yeah, PSC is a lot easier), a serious disease of the liver with no treatment but transplant, a friend kept bugging me to go back to Buenos Aires – with her this time. She said if she was diagnosed with something like that, she’d want to travel as much as possible. I went with her. For a month. I didn’t have a bad time, but I did get sick down there and I was pretty tired much of my time there.

We were staying in an apartment in a well-to-do neighborhood and for the most part I hung out within a 10 to 12 block area. That’s where my days and my evenings were spent. That part of the trip was quite lovely, the way I spent my days.

I went to the same café every morning for coffee and breakfast. The wait staff got to know me and we would converse in Spanish. My accent improved over the weeks and they trusted to have little conversations with me.

I was writing a lot and also working, tutoring students' writing online in Colorado. I would go to two different internet shops and use their computers. At one, the guy who ran it obviously didn’t like Americans but I was always very polite and soft-spoken (in Spanish) to him. He finally softened to me and slowed down his Spanish.

The national polo grounds were only four blocks from our apartment and though there were no games then, I saw many polo players striding through the neighborhood in their tall black leather riding boots and riding outfits.

If I wanted to go downtown, I got a taxi. My friend Sandra came over and picked me up for tango one night at her favorite club. Another night she drove us out to a special place by the River Plate for dinner at a restaurant called Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Seriously. We looked across the river to see if Uruguay was visible.

I took private Spanish lessons a couple of times a week at a school around the corner from the apartment. And every day and every evening I walked in the neighborhood.

Was it a bucket list vacation? Yes! My daily life was very pleasant and it was filled with people, some very friendly, some not so much, and some standouts. On a daily basis, it was decidedly enjoyable.

But I didn’t get on the train and head south to Patagonia to explore that magical land. I didn’t visit landmarks and as many neighborhoods as possible in Buenos Aires, city of 13 million. My life, just as it is here in Denver, was contained within the radius that I got to know well.

Second, don’t wait to travel – go now. I’ve traveled to and lived in a lot of very cool places all my life. I lived in Hawaii (yes, it is paradise) for most of a decade and graduated from the University of Hawaii, worked, played, really lived there. I lived in Washington, D.C. while Nixon was president and the Watergate scandal was breaking. I went to the Smithsonian frequently, rode the very scary bus, and spent a lot of time in Georgetown. I moved back to Florida, from whence I came, and lived right on the beach for five years, because that’s what I wanted to do. Then I moved out West, became a ski bum for one winter, moved to Denver, and skied for ten years. I never had tons of money, but I made it happen. Somehow.

Three, don’t spend your life yearning – just leave your six-mile radius (this is a scientific fact gathered from cell phone stats) and meet new people, experience new places today, this week, every week. Change your Starbucks now!

I still want to go to some places. But mostly I want to visit people I love. In California, my friend Michelle. In Washington, D.C., my niece Dayna. In Chester, New Hampshire, my nephew Jay and his wife Michelle and their two kids, Jackson and Caroline. In Flagstaff, my niece Kerry and my two nephews Kai and Kenny, and their spouses and many children. And when the weather is cool enough in Florida, my sister and her husband, Diane and Jay, and some very special friends there. That’s about it.

I would love to hear your ideas and your bucket lists and what you think of my advice. And please leave your comment here – you don’t have to put your real name down! – so we can get some fun dialogue going. I look forward to hearing from you.

Paperwork and Illness, USA

My hardest won piece of advice in working alongside Social Security Administration? Laughter and endorphin-raising exercise, when possible!

As soon as I applied for Social Security Disability Income, because of my new-found inability to work associated with my long-term illness, I discovered a new form of work – paperwork performed for the SS Administration. It stupefied me how many forms had to be filled in and how many more records needed to be supplied. What surprised me most, though, was the continuity of the work. Something new every week, a new situation to be solved every month or so. And then waiting to hear the Result. Making phone calls – finding out how much of your day could be eaten up on hold, waiting for (hopefully) the right person. Making trips to SSA offices – as infrequently as possible. That was the Whole Day.

I took up this new form of work in my life at first with wonder, then frustration, impatience, tears, more symptoms of my illness, insomnia, unrelieved stress, and belief there was no one to help. But the paperwork never stopped and the win-lose levels were raised, and I sought relief. That’s when I discovered I could laugh at the worst moments. I could completely let go and find peace inside. I found a new perspective and I began to sleep at night. Stress was relieved. And I got help, too!

If you have Disability Income and have some difficult issues with the SSA to deal with, you can contact a federal legislator – a congressional member’s office. Preferably a well-known, well-connected Senator in your party of preference. And plead for mercy. They have people on staff called Constituent Advocates whose job it is to negotiate with SSA (and other federal agencies) for you. That pleased me no end. I love to pass along that bit of information because it’s so invaluable, and because it helps you laugh when you’re not laughing and should be.

Set this short list to memory and you, too, will be fine –

·      Hope for the best

·      Take names, always always always

·      Relax

·      Exercise as much as possible to build a store of endorphins

·      Eat dessert whenever you can

There are many secrets I have to keep with Social Security. But not these. They are mine, and now yours, too.

Post-Mastectomy Blues – Breast Surgery, Part 2

It’s a secret – no one knows what a mastectomy surgery will leave strewn in its path.

I had no idea what to expect – not really. I knew I’d have a drain and another tube connected to a Pain-Buster, both coming out of the incision after surgery. I knew I could shower within the first 24 hours after surgery. I knew when I’d return to see a nurse practitioner for dressing removal. I was given some exercises from the nurse at the hospital, and she said they were really important to do. I knew it all hurt.

I was in shock after the surgery, though. A shower? Too complicated for me with the two drains. I couldn’t look at the surgical site, even with the dressing on. I couldn’t think or feel anything. Just do exercises, go see nurse about dressing and drains.

When the drain and the Pain-Buster tube were both removed, the extractions created strange sensations in my now foreign land. The nurse touched the incision and there was numbness and then feeling, then pain. I told her. Yes, you’ll get that. Get what? I get nothing so far.

Eventually I was without dressing and drains, and left on my own. I took a look in the mirror at the incision. I couldn’t bear looking at it – I felt so ugly and deformed. Thankfully it was late fall in Colorado and I could wear bundling clothes – sweaters and layers that faked the breast that was no longer there. But when I’d go to the bathroom and take my clothes off to take a shower, one brief glance in the mirror would horrify me. I learned not to look.

Was I supposed to know this? Was I supposed to have asked the oncologists (there were so many of them) and the nurses what to expect physically and emotionally? I didn’t know the questions, and I was too worried about Having Cancer to even consider the other side of Getting Rid Of It.

I couldn’t touch the incision except very infrequently. I would try to imagine a lover ever wanting to touch my body again. My breasts had been so sensitive. They are a secondary sexual characteristic. What do you do without one of your breasts? What about women who lose both breasts to cancer? What do they think, feel, experience with no breasts and two incisions that don’t feel at all like breast tissue used to feel?

I felt de-sexed. I felt cut upon and violated in the worst way. I had submitted to a body part amputation with no knowledge imparted to me of what that result would be.

It took months to go to Nordstrom and be fitted for a prosthesis for my left breast. I wish I had gone to see them prior to the surgery. They treated me like a woman – a woman! – and anticipated my emotional responses. They protected me. They coddled me. They beautified me. They brought me a little bit closer back to being a woman and feeling sexy and feminine.

If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer and mastectomy is offered as the preferred surgical option, are you willing to ask all the questions about the result? Will you go beyond cancer recurrence and ask about the exact physical result? And then, will you go beyond the physical result and ask for information and support for the emotional results of mastectomy – and honestly, any breast surgery? And are you willing to show your naked heart and ask for help?

What’s it really like? Breast Surgery, Part 1

When you’re diagnosed with breast cancer, there is a lot of scientific-medical-surgical consulting that takes place. There is a sense of urgency – for both the doctors and the patient. Get it completely diagnosed, measured through biopsy, PET scan done to see if there is cancer anywhere else in the body. Usually the patient talks first with an oncologist and then a surgeon. The surgeon makes recommendations based on the location and size of the tumor.

“I have a tumor. It’s malignant and growing. How fast? Has it gone into my lymph nodes yet?” These are some of the thoughts I had. “Will I need chemotherapy, radiation?”  

“We won’t know about chemo or rad,” the scientific team says, “until your Oncotype testing comes back two or three weeks after the surgery. It will also measure the likelihood of recurrence and the need (or not) for chemotherapy and possibly radiation.”

No one – No One – asks you how you’re feeling, either physically or emotionally. The decisive and urgent actions to eradicate the cancer growing in your body are the focus of the whole medical team – oncologist, breast surgeon, oncological radiologist.

I was given the choice of lumpectomy or mastectomy. But two surgeons highly recommended mastectomy because of the placement (behind the nipple) and the size of the tumor. I wanted it done, cleaned, gone. I have such small breasts, barely a handful. I chose mastectomy; the doctors noted duly, good choice. Had ... such small breasts. One breast now. And many women lose both at the same time and in the first surgery.

But no one came to tell me how it feels, not physically but emotionally and mentally, to have a breast removed. A lumpectomy, too, can be deeply invasive and heavy scarring results. No one asks something like, “Do you know or suspect that you have PTSD from any other event or process in your life? Who are your caregivers after surgery? We’d like to meet with as many of them as we can so we can prepare them for your physical needs, but also your emotional responses following surgery.”

No. No one comes and asks these questions. Perhaps a woman, with breast cancer awaiting the surgery, has been raped in the past. Maybe even 20 years before, and still has PTSD, and she’s beginning to see and feel the tiny signs of being triggered – rising anxiety, full-blown panic attacks (Oh, I just had one – and then another comes along two days before surgery).

No one prepares you for the full impact of the first minute of awakening from anesthesia, as you slowly remember why you’re in the hospital bed hooked up to IVs and you don’t know what to touch, and you don’t want to touch anything.

Part 2 tomorrow…