Doing Nothing

It is I 

I have a confession to make. I've been avoiding my blog, circling it as though it were a dangerous wild animal, looking at it sideways, pacing before it. I had a fabulous experience that I could have been blogging about. I finished a 30 day Bikram Yoga Challenge. That's pretty amazing! I started on December second and finished just in time for New Year's Eve on the thirty-first. It felt so good to end the year with another major accomplishment under my belt. Why, then, wasn't I blogging about it?

I'm thinking as I write and I'm realizing that perhaps I was actually rebelling against the driven over-achiever's culturally embedded imperative to always be producing. Without planning it, without acknowledging it, even, I took a break.

In the middle of the Bikram Challenge I started thinking about the next challenge. I needed to have something in place so that I didn't fall into idleness and wreck my goals for lack of planning. I had ideas. A jump rope challenge, a plank challenge, trying out a new style of yoga. It turns out that when I finished the Bikram Challenge, I was finished. I felt no motivation to jump into the next thing.

It has been nearly a month since I have done much of anything. Only now do I realize just how much I needed the down-time. I feel so much more creative and effective. I'm brimming with ideas for my classes (the new semester starts next week) and I have a couple of articles in the works. Yes, I know. Of course. Duh. Everybody knows this. Knowing is only a tenth of the battle.

This break was not my choice, really. I was scheduled to teach a class over the winter session at the institution I serve. The class was cancelled and I found out (due to my own distracted state) too late to line up another gig. I spent a few days panicking and then decided that I was not going to wind up wandering the streets. I had resources; I would use them. And then, uneasily, fretfully, I allowed myself to rest.

Although I have pretty much stayed on course food wise (no dairy or gluten but more carbs and fewer vegetables than I really should do), I've only worked out once since I finished the Bikram Challenge. I planned to make a bunch of videos and even set up my studio. I recorded myself singing one song, took a couple of pictures (see above and below) and that was it. I spent the rest of the time on marathon Hulu sessions and Facebook. I enjoyed being snowed in during the Great Polar Vortex of 0'14. Occasionally I left the house. Last week I started busking again. I'm going to need the money to cover what my savings don't cover until I get my first paycheck sometime in mid February.

Really resting is still new to me, believe it or not. United States culture has a prejudice against resting anyway (the local word for it is "lazy") but at least the tradition of a taking a vacation (inhumanely short though it might be) does exist. Thing is, my family, being from overseas, never caught on to that tradition.  My parents were both students and then both working. We never took an actual family vacation and I never learned how to truly give myself a break. Generally speaking, I work pretty much non-stop.

That ends this year - with one caveat. Next time I will be better prepared so that I can take a month off without worrying about my bills. I will be deliberate about it. I plan to have no plans. Doing nothing is highly underrated. Try it if you can.

Happy Lifestyle Purge: The Prequal

(Be sure to scroll down to my video at the end)

I spent the first three weeks of August visiting with my family in California. That visit was the first in a long time when I can remember actually, truly, genuinely relaxing. During the first week I woke up every morning and took a leisurely stroll down the stairs to find my parents in the kitchen preparing a scrumptious, nutritious, meat free, gluten free and dairy free breakfast.

Dad makes his famous nutty blueberry muffins

After breakfast, we took a nap.  Then we woke up and mom prepared a sumptuous lunch bursting with flavor, color, and nutrition.

Tofu in fresh tomato sauce with sauteed green beans, steamed black rice with lentils and a sweet squash mash

Creamed pumpkin and asparagus with black rice and lentils and soy mutton

My sister had her husband gave their two daughters puppies for their birthdays.  I had the profound pleasure of babysitting them. They usually came over after lunch. I did consider dognapping them.

Caramel and Bambi

I also got to visit with friends whom I had not seen in about twenty years. Amazingly, we seemed to pick up right where we had left off.

Early on Monday morning of the second week my dad woke me up to join him for a hike. This is a tradition between us; we always go hiking together when we are in California. We went hiking several times that week and I lost another five pounds. Here is a video I made of us hiking a couple of years ago. Altitude is an issue (I live at sea level and our California hometown is 1,160 feet above sea level). Also, I'm in much better shape now.

With nothing to do but sleep, eat nutritious food, drink plenty of water, exercise, visit with friends and pet puppies, I truly rested for the first time in ages.  

Now I had the mental space to spend lots of time thinking about how I wanted to organize the next steps of my Intentional Happiness Lifestyle design process. Paring down to 400 things is my most immediate and truly daunting goal. For months I have been mulling over how to begin.

I have a large storage room full of stuff to get rid of. That task hangs like a millstone around my neck. Happily, I found help and inspiration. I have become obsessed with Alejandra Costello's home organizing videos. Here is my favorite. It has revolutionized the way I organize my clothes. I shouldn't admit this but I watch this video whenever I feel stressed out or overwhelmed. Alejandra has this cheerful and calming manner about her that helps me relax.

I had been watching Alejandra's videos for a couple of months and all the tips I had picked up from her over that time suddenly came together; I knew what I needed to do! While I couldn't complete the storage job right away, I could take care of my room.

Oh, my room. My deep and shameful secret. Nothing felt more depressing than coming home each day to that disaster. I literally had to clear a path from my bed to the closet and on my bed I kept a space clear for me to sleep on. Otherwise I was totally surrounded by a mess. I would watch the television show Hoarders just to scare myself, imagining a pathetic future in which I would make the news after the firefighters had to dig me out.

It isn't a hoarding problem as much as it is a messy problem. My breakthrough came when I realized that the main issue was my desk and a storage bench I had placed in front of it. I had intended to use the bench as a seat that doubled as storage. Unfortunately, it was too low so actually sitting at the desk was truly uncomfortable. Additionally, the desk had no drawers and since I couldn't reach it very well (because the bench was in the way), I tended to just throw stuff on top if it. And so it piled up.

It is a pile up no more. Watch this video to see the improvement. I'm not quit finished. In a video about organizing closets Alejandra mentions how she switched from hanging her jeans to putting them in drawers and demonstrates how much more room that gave her (tons). So I still have to get drawers and those under the bed containers for the vacuum bags I store my off-season clothes in.  Still, there is much progress and I am very happy. Enjoy!

Opts Out/Opts In (The Movie): Chapter One

Update Update Update! Here is what has happened with the camper so far.  This update is in the form of a little movie.  I'm thinking to do more of these little movies. It means fewer entries each month but I'm thinking that these are more fun than just text.  It's an experiment!  Enjoy.

Goal Candy

The month of June ends on a high note, I am so very happy to say.  I found a source for tires for my hand-made shoes, the tooth that has bothered me for two years is gone, my driver license and social security cards are on the way, and (the very latest) the camper has been insured. The next step is to get it registered and repaired.

There were a few days this month when I thought that I would have to sell the camper and start over again. Things seemed pretty bleak and I often felt disoriented in the complex maze of overlapping and intersecting government offices and forms and requirements. The constant trot from obstacle to hurdle consumed my energies and I felt disconnected from the passion that fuels what I do.

Thankfully, a friend posted this video on my Facebook page and my passion came flooding back. This family is simply amazing and they have inspired a few long-term goals for me. It can be done! So, here is some goal candy:

Why am I doing this Part II (aka The Prey that Got Away)

I have written a blog post about intentional happiness lifestyle design.  That post presents one aspect of why I am making the lifestyle changes that I am. This post presents another aspect of my decision.

Do you remember The Social Contract? Jean-Jacque Rousseau? The treatise on the relationship between the people and the government? Rousseau focused on the sources of political authority which he credited to "the people" rather than to a monarch who ruled by so-called divine right. His work revolutionized politics in Europe and significantly influenced the American Revolution.

There is another sort of social contract that threads the fabric of every society. It is an economic contract. In the context of capitalist industrialized societies, that relationship mainly lays between corporations and people. Basically, the corporations (i.e. the shareholders) own the means of production (sound familiar?) and the workers produce the products. The corporations sell the products and (here is the social contract part) distribute the profits between themselves and the workers. The corporations have a vested interest in the welfare of the workers, the workers have a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations. That's how it is supposed to work.

Then there are the banks. The banks make it possible for the corporations and the people to conduct business: Purchase and sell assets, finance large investments, store their money, and so forth.

There are rules and regulations that govern the transactions within this economic contract. They are intended to curb excess, prevent abuse, and prosecute it when it does happen.

The United States enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during the Clinton Administration. This got certain people thinking, hey, there is no limit, let's milk this thing for all it is worth. So they got rid of the rules, went hog wild, and then, eventually, as should be expected, it all came crashing down.

My issue is this: in the aftermath, the corporations and the banks (well, the people who run them, really) have made no effort to uphold their end of the economic bargain. It is much worse than that. They have coerced ordinary citizens (via the government) to pay to fix the mess that they made. Below I have posted an excellent video made by the political economist (excellent combo) and Brown University professor, Mark Blyth that explains this all quite nicely. (By the way, I find his accent super sexy.)

In the beginning I totally accepted the financial crisis hype, believing that allowing the banks to fail would lead to unbridled disaster. I believed that the bank bailout was unavoidable and prudent. Perhaps it was. However, the aftermath is unconscionable and I find myself growing more unwilling to participate in this nonsense.

So, I ask myself, what can I do to make big banks and multi-national corporations irrelevant to my life?

For me the answer lays in arranging my life in a way that has as little to do with mass consumption as possible. So, in addition to changing my life for the sake of living in the now and maximizing my happiness, I am also minimizing the stranglehold that consumerism has had on my life.

Imagine being free from worrying about money and the constant, grinding, soul obliterating obsession with the means of obtaining it and, rather, having one's needs met via direct exchange with other human beings. Imagine a life where what the "too big to fail" banks do has minimal impact because money is not the central mode of exchange.

Again, I am not doing this because I don't believe in industry and the economies of scale. I am doing this because our banks and corporations have not only betrayed and abandoned us to the wolves, they have become the wolves and they are feeding on us. Many argue that they always have. Fine. Whatever the case, I choose to be the prey that got away.