So you may have noticed that I’ve been trying out a bunch of self-improvement things — decluttering, meditation, productivity tricks.  There were a bunch of popular self-improvement books on sale in January, AND I’m doing research for a project.  Anyway, I’ve started noticing that each source of advice comes with a caveat that the advice will only work if I stick with it long enough.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

But first, a case in point: meditation.  I’ve now tried several dozen meditation apps INCLUDING meditating in VR.

[Sidenote: Can we pause for a moment to talk about that?  It’s divine.  You put on the headset and you feel like you’re sitting on a beach.  You can look behind you and see an expanse of sand.  You can look in front of you and see gently lapping waves.  And then you sit there for a half hour while a voice gently talks you through meditation while you stare at the ocean.  It is amazing.  I want to cry the whole time I’m doing it, which negates the whole meditation thing.  But still.]

[A side note to THAT side note: The Wolvog sent me on a VR adventure in Bora Bora.  I felt like I was standing in one of those bungalows over the water.  I could look around the room; walk over to the deck and peer into the crystal clear water.  It was amazing.  I cried with that, too.  I get a little overwhelmed when he sets up VR experiences for me and get his headset smeary.]

Anyway.  Back to the point.

Every single meditation apps comes with a caveat.  It will take time to get into it.  How long?  They never say because it will be different for each individual.  But the message is that it WILL work if I stick with it.  It may take days or it make take months, but as long as I don’t drop the practice, my mind will one day embrace meditation.

I am totally on board with the idea that things take time.  Learning a new skill takes time.  And I can even accept that meditation is a learnable skill.  But I start pushing back whenever the “stick with it” clause gets mentioned because I’ve experience too many areas of life where I can dedicate myself to a task fully and still not reach the outcome I want.  When I hear that clause, it brings out this contrarian side to my personality that developed during infertility and now comes out to play whenever I hear that something applies to everyone.  Or all.  Or anyone.

No.

I want an app that say, “You may be able to learn meditation, but you may not.  And it’s not because you didn’t try or stick with it long enough.  It just may not work for you, and that’s okay, too.  Find something else.”

THAT is what this contrarian needs.

And at the same time, I’m really bummed by this residue from infertility.  Infertility changes your personality in strange ways; some obviously connected to the experience and others that take a twisting path.  That you don’t realize until you realize it.  And it was a sad day when I realized that the experience brings out this contrarian side, too.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Whoa.

So I was surfing the web (remember ye olden days when we jumped from link to link vs. got spoon-fed content from our Facebook feed?) and somehow landed on this 2014 piece about taking a life audit.  I LOVE it.

You take 100 post-it notes and write down 100 wishes/life goals in an hour, stopping when the timer goes off.  If you only have 40 wishes/goals, that’s fine.  The more wishes/goals, the more you actually have to do.  So it may be more manageable to NOT get to 100.

Then you group them and get a birds-eye view of what types of things matter to you.  And then you finally prioritize by time.  And then start to do your first five activities.  It’s actually more complicated than that, and it would probably help if you read the whole thing.

But riffing off this idea, what was the first idea (wish/goal) that popped into your brain as you read this?  In other words, what would go on your first post-it note?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

A few days ago, I wrote about how I front load my week, and people commented that they had no clue what I was doing that required this type of to-do list.  So I thought I would (1) explain my schedule and (2) explain why I think you SHOULD write down things like “cook dinner.”

So the first part: I’m a contractor, which means I do work for a lot of places.  In order to balance all those projects and make sure everything gets done on time, I write it all down.  I never miss a deadline because I can pick up my bullet journal (which is where I write down notes from meeting as well as any tasks that isn’t taking place this week) or this weekly paper to-do list and see what needs to get done by the end of the day.  I’m not great at keeping things in my head.  If it doesn’t get written down, it doesn’t get done.

So there is that: I need this sort of to-do list because I work for many places.  I use this paper to-do list in conjunction with my bullet journal.

I DO write down things like cook dinner, go grocery shopping, clean the house, and see a movie.  And this is why: I don’t want to put off things so I don’t schedule more than what I have time to do in a given day.  I may move things around from time to time when new things pop up, but for the most part, I can look at how full a square looks and judge accordingly before I promise to do something.

So, for instance, I kept last Thursday pretty light because I knew I had tickets to see Hamlet at night, and it’s a four hour play.  I was going to have a hard stop by 6 pm at the latest, and I had to pick up the kids from school, make dinner, and eat dinner before the show.  So, really, a soft stop by 4:30 pm.

Knowing that, I scheduled as much as I could into Wednesday and Friday because I was trying to be realistic about Thursday, and I bumped a few things to the weekend rather than promising them by the end of the week.  If I had just written Hamlet in that square, I probably would have scheduled myself for more things, not thinking about all that goes into getting to the show on time including driving people, making a meal, and consuming it.  So I would have probably felt panicked by Thursday afternoon with my to-do list looming too large.  Instead, I got everything done because I reminded myself of everything big that needs to get done.

Do I put down ridiculous details?  No.  But the stuff that will impact how much I can get done goes on the list.  Every meeting, every project, every task that other people need me to do, every drive to an activity, every cleaning task that will take longer than 10 minutes; it all goes on the list.

I don’t think I’m abnormally busy, though my work situation means I have to organize myself in a way that I didn’t have to do when I worked for a single entity in a single location.  But I think I would still schedule my to-do list like this even if I was still teaching because it means I can visually see how my day will unfold.  It helps me to not overschedule myself but it also helps me to not underschedule myself because I do like to be involved in things.  And now, when I say “yes” or “no,” I do so knowing how much open time I actually have in my day.

Which means I can host holidays or join boards or get involved in supporting a local campaign and know that I have time to get those things done with everything else that I’m already scheduled to do.

So, yeah, write it down.  Write is all down.  It will help you rethink your life.

And yes, writing this blog post was on my to-do list as “write daily blog post.”

Today is Random Act of Kindness Day. It was started years ago by an IF blogger to mark her son’s birthday.  He died one day after his birth, and since he was not going to be able to do all the random acts of kindness he would have completed if he had lived, his parents set up this day for people to do kindness in his name.  So today I will do kind acts and I will let the person know that it was done on Thomas’s behalf.

I found out about this day over 10 years ago, and I’ve participated every year.  It’s for Thomas, but it’s really to tether all of our kids who aren’t here to do their own great acts.  And I love this sentiment: “finding ways to make the world a little nicer, a little sweeter, and a little happier on his birthday. Ripples into eternity, as they say.”  We all could benefit from a nicer, sweeter, happier world.

So in honour of Thomas, please go put something good into the world.

And let his parents know what you’ve done today in his name.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Finding Asa Gray” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Having it All” (Countingpinklines)
• “That Damned Uterus” (Silent Sorority)
• “I’m Not Special.  I Feel Stupid” (Delayed But Not Denied)
• “Part of the Problem” (Not a Wasted Word)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inexplicably Missing has a post about bumper stickers for infertiles.  Snickering and cringing over the thought of 70 embryo stickers on the back window.  I love this post for the last line: that idea of making things less invisible.  It’s easy to see what is there; much harder to see the things that are not there.

Pages, Stages, and Rages has a moving post about being out with her friend who learned that her father had been in an accident and had died.  This line gutted me: “This wasn’t the first time we’ve cried together, it won’t be the last.”  The post is an important reminder that it’s okay to not say anything.  To just sit with someone and let them know that they’re not alone.

Lastly, Res Cogitatae has a post about mentally traveling back to the clinic when she tastes a breakfast sandwich she’d get herself years ago on IUI days.  She explains, “They’ll never be ‘just’ breakfast sandwiches for me … Those sandwiches for me will always taste of the waiting room, the early mornings, and our quiet, mounting despair that we might not ever get to be parents.” For me, it’s the scent of a certain soap.  It’s amazing how our senses can emotionally bring us right back into a moment.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Random Act of Kindness Day.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 2nd and 9th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I was listening to the Science of Happiness podcast — the episode with the director of Inside Out — and Dacher Keltner mentioned that humans experience 21 or 22 distinct emotions.  So my first question:

Is that more or less than you thought there would be?

I assumed that there were many more emotions, but when I tried to list them in my head, I didn’t come close to hitting 22 (so I’m not sure why I thought there would be more).  I looked it up when I got home, and it turns out that Keltner has a piece on Greater Good stating that there are 27 emotions.

[I put the list below because while that last link is fine to click on (it takes you to the study), the study contains a link to an emotional hypermap that shows the videos people watched to chart their emotional response and arrive at the list.  And I really really really wish I hadn’t clicked on the hypermap because I saw some disturbing images/videos.  So, just a warning that if you do read the study, don’t click willy-nilly on the hypermap link embedded in the article.  It seems a little irresponsible that the study didn’t give this warning, so I’m giving it to you.]

• Admiration
• Adoration
• Aesthetic Appreciation
• Amusement
• Anxiety
• Awe
• Awkwardness
• Boredom
• Calmness
• Confusion
• Craving
• Disgust
• Empathetic pain
• Entrancement
• Envy
• Excitement
• Fear
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Sympathy
• Triumph

So those are the emotions.

THEN I listened to Guy Winch as a guest on Note to Self, and he had this great point about how people only list one emotion/sensation when people ask them how they are.  They don’t say that they’re joyful with a little bit of envy mixed in and a sprinkle of excitement as they think ahead to weekend plans.

They say they’re sad.  Or they’re happy.  Or everything is fine.  I realized that I often answer that I’m tired — mostly because I am tired — but tired isn’t an emotion.  Though I don’t know why it isn’t an emotion if calmness is an emotion (and… if calmness is an emotion, why isn’t impatient or agitated?).  But anyway… I just thought it was an interesting idea to state two or more things the next time you’re asked how you’re feeling.

As I’m writing this, I feel anxious and content with a bit of satisfaction thrown into the mix.

How are you feeling?