The Flying Machine

Habits are harder to form than you'd think. Especially when there are lots of forces working against the regular repetition of a behavior you're hoping to cement.

Case in point: been traveling for work a lot lately, and working long hours pretty nonstop, which means I've opted most nights to stretch or read a few minutes of a novel rather than put my own thoughts to paper.

How hard can it be to just take 10 minutes to write a bit?

Real hard, if you're going to bed later than planned and getting up earlier than you'd like.

There have been times I've been so busy that I scheduled my days in detail down to 15-minute increments. A meeting here, a coffee there, phone calls, exercise, the very time it takes to walk from one place to another, the whole deal. Guess it's a survival mechanism? A way to still feel a little bit in control?

I got away from all that when I moved to Oregon because I already stood out as wildly more Type A than anyone else. And I didn't really need to. I was busy, sure, but the sheer volume of stimuli - opportunities, really - was simply smaller.

Now that I'm in DC, where every minute seems to count in a different, more high-pressure way, I'm inching back towards scheduling in everything. 15 minutes here, 15 there, and before you know it you've got your day.

Maybe it'll help me write more often too?

Posted by Sarah at 8:05 PM | Permalink

Things I learned this weekend:

- There truly is no such thing as too many doughnuts. At least for me. As I ate my way across Kentucky's doughnut shops with 3 friends, eating several a day, effectively all day, I didn't once feel ill. This probably bodes ill for my old age, when I'll probably stop doing everything except eating sweets nonstop until I keel over.

- Speaking of keels, apparently in some fried chicken joints you can order a "keel". The keel is a strip of cartilage connecting the breasts. What does this mean when you see it on a menu? I have no idea. None of us were brave enough to order it or ask the (understandably) surly guy behind the counter.

- Flying home at the tail end of a weekend late at night before a big day at work is really not the best idea. Really.

- I still love horses almost as much as I did when I was a kid.

- I love cats even more than I did as a kid. This also probably bodes ill for my old age.

- College friends are great road trip / weekend trip / bourbon tasting / doughnut eating / music listening / joke telling companions. I'm awfully lucky to have so many of them in my life.

- Kentucky is way more fun than you'd think.

Posted by Sarah at 7:43 PM | Permalink

Things I'm thinking about tonight, in no particular order:

- It seems my immune system is not as good as I always thought it was. Because the germs of DC are destroying me. Haven't had three winter colds in one year in... ever? This place is a Petri dish.

- Old friends - such a pleasure! So nice to sit over scallops and goat and beets and brussells sprouts tonight with Julie and talk shop about men, work, life, the Farm Bill.. A good reminder that even when I'm sick, tired, and busy friends are worth it. Always.

- Valentine's Day. It happened, as it always does, with little fanfare. Sat in the living room with George - seeking refuge from a boisterous crowd at his place - eating chocolate, drinking tea, and gleefully trolling OkCupid. Pretty alright, I guess.

- Kentucky tomorrow! Weekend trips mean something so different on the east coast. Gone are the weekend backpacks, in are flights to nearby states to eat and drink and chew the fat for hours with, yes, more old friends. Wish I could have it both ways but you never can, can you?

Posted by Sarah at 9:28 PM | Permalink

I used to have a doctor friend in Oregon who'd come home after a particularly long, hard day and say I left it all on the field today. It wasn't necessarily a bad or a good thing - just a comment on what the day demanded. Everything.

Today was that sort of day for me.

I've always been the kind of person to save a little juice for the home stretch - to always keep a little in reserve, just in case. When I ran cross country in high school, I'd carefully mete out my energy with each mile so that I'd have enough for a final intense burst at the finish. Plenty of other runners would start off giving it their all and sprint to the front for the first 10 minutes only to taper off in the second half of the race. Others would miscalculate, spend it all somewhere along the way, and find themselves literally collapsing, convulsing, vomiting just before the finish line, having overspent their reserves.

It's a risk, right? You've got to know yourself well enough to make a smart judgement - and hope that whatever plays out along the way doesn't upend your strategy. But I've been around long enough to know that the universe just loves upending our strategies.

How do you, then, make a practice of giving it - whatever it is - your all without collapsing just before the finish line? Where's the balance? I sure haven't figured that out yet.

Posted by Sarah at 6:54 PM | Permalink

Today I was an adult through and through. I mean, I've basically been an adult since age 4 but today it was clearer than usual.

My friend George bought a house today.
Another friend talked about quitting his job to take his startup full time.
I made a professional decision that, while perhaps less helpful for my own professional development, is the right thing to do.

Guess we're growing up and stuff.

One thing I'm grateful for as I get older is an increased ability to weigh the pros and cons of a decision fully - and to know when to take better, smarter risks and when to walk away.

It sounds cheesy - Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, anyone? - but it's true. I don't have as much the compulsion I used to to leap full throttle into any and all opportunities and challenges that come my way. I know when to take 'em - and when to let 'em slide on by.

... For the moment, at least.

Posted by Sarah at 8:24 PM | Permalink

Funny how hard it is to find ten minutes just lying around.

Seems like I've always got ten for facebook or animated GIFs or one last twitter trawl before bed, but to spend that ten productively? Working through what's left in mind at the end of the day and coming out the other side with a little bit of reflection? Seemed well-nigh impossible.

But then I signed up for this wellness thing, a chance to set and share and aim to meet a few goals every week in the presence of friends, and the need for reflection was at the top of my list.

I used to write almost daily. Back in the days of deeply confessional quasi-public diaries on sites like Diary-X and Scribble, I and a few close friends (hi Liz!) would pour out reams of words, detailing our days and our feelings and - at least in my case - more than a bit of angst, delivered in song lyrics and deliberately truncated little snippets of expression I wasn't brave enough to let fly in full. I pretty much stopped writing sometime in college; too much going on, too little time, and the overwhelming need to take it all in at a torrid pace.

That tendency has continued despite my frequent wishes to get back on the horse over the years. I figure bending this Wellness Challenge thing to this end might help - ten minutes, every day, spent writing something. Anything. And maybe with a public goal, a social incentive to succeed, and the chance to do some real habit formation over ten weeks, I can make it happen!

There's a lot of overlap across everyone's goals - floss daily, eat more vegetables (!), work out, read more, sleep more, be a little more disciplined, a little better to ourselves. And I, too, pledged for vegetables and yoga and reading more of the print newspapers that threaten to bury me alive. But I also pledged to spend ten measly minutes every day - well, night - being a bit more reflective. In writing.

So here I am. It feels good to stare at this little white box and let some text roll off my fingers, banal as it may be. I think maybe this is gonna be a good thing.

Posted by Sarah at 7:00 PM | Permalink