the nature of habits and myself

Earlier in October, I signed up for an online course that was committing to do a yoga practice at home for 30 days. The commitment would be supported through video and email support by the yoga teacher. After the course, theoretically, one has gotten into a habit of daily yoga.

While I have enjoyed the course and practicing yoga at home, I have not been able to manage to make it a habit. In fact, I believe I have an unusual predilection for not forming habits out of daily practices. I'm not saying that I don't have things that I do regularly - showering, checking email, etc. Or that I don't respond to certain stimuli in certain, patterned ways - over-eating when upset, tearing at my nails when nervous, etc. Those ideas aren't what I mean when I say habit. I mean willfully and purposefully putting in place behaviors that become so ingrained that eventually they become almost subconscious. Things like daily yoga/exercise, filling my bike tires weekly, regularly writing on a blog. I have great ambitions and seem to have rather poor follow through.

For example, all of my journals before my 17th birthday look like this - one week of daily writing, an entry two weeks later that tries to catch up and fails, one more aborted attempt to catch up, the rest is blank pages. This was my habit. By the time I was 17, even I had recognized this pattern in myself. So, when I received a beautiful journal from a friend for my birthday, I was reticent to do anything with it. I didn't want it to end up like all the others. I thought about it for a while and wondered what would happen if I didn't date my entries? What if I just wrote what I wanted and then put it aside? And then, it wouldn't matter if I picked it up the next day or in two weeks or in two months or two years. It would look like I was just starting from where I left off. I started the journal in January of 2000 and finished it, my only complete journal to date, around 6 years later. I started my current journal in January of 2006 and am not nearly halfway done.

What does this example say about me? And, can I translate it into something useful in my other goals for myself? How do go about setting up a habit without holding myself accountable to time? I guess I can't really say that I made journaling a habit. I did the opposite. I removed the element of regularity. It worked for what I wanted - to finish a journal - but it didn't make journaling a consistent part of my life. How can I remove my self-sabotaging expectations of myself while still holding myself accountable? Maybe I'll go contemplate it while in downward dog.

the outdoors

My first backcountry backpacking/camping trip, ever, happened this Labor Day weekend. While I was a girl scout for many years growing up, we never actually went camping. I had never carried a pack, set up a tent, or done a dozen things that I did this weekend. 

Conversely, Martin was a boy scout. He went camping at least twice a year. One might say that this was an instance of him growing up in a rural area, while I grew up in a suburban area, but I don't think that's particularly accurate. I'm pretty sure boy scouts who lived in Roswell, GA went camping. I'm alos pretty sure that other girls who may or may not have been girl scouts but lived in Roswell, GA went camping growing up. 

Instead, I would say that camping was just not part of my family's lifestyle. My father and brother didn't go camping without us women-folk; they just didn't go camping. My parents never owned a tent. Our sleeping bags were the Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony style ones, not the keep you warm in under 30 degree weather kind.

And I think that my total and complete lack of camping and backpacking experience in the 80's and 90's actually may have been a good thing. You see camping gear used to be a lot heavier. A lot. And I was a tiny, tiny little thing growing up. While I loved the outdoors, I don't know that I would have loved hiking with a big external frame pack.

Now, they have ultra light tents and sleeping bags/pads that scrunch up into little bundles. Now, I have friends who have so much backpacking experience that they can lend us 95% of the gear we need to go. I think the only thing we actually had to buy was a pack for me because, as I mentioned, I'm kind of small. The best fit for me was actually a youth pack, not a women's pack.

I wonder if my parents went camping as children. I wonder if my brother and sister have been camping. I must say that I never perceived it as a lack growing up. But, I'm glad that, as an adult, I have had this experience. Sadly, it has made my non-consumerist goals much more difficult, because now I want to be able to do this on our own.

Getting out of the city. The silence of the evenings. The clean air. The easy tiredness in the evenings knowing that you have earned your rest. The sparkling fresh water of the mountain lake that we swam in. All of these things must be experienced again.

My Sister

Krista and Uncle David

I'm reminded tonight that you are, by far, the wild child. The mischievous one who knows how to make people laugh. But also the one who likes to fit in and cares about what other people think. Ever treading where I am unable to go, yet more aware of the judgements our culture lays upon us.

Food for Thought

Dinner alone

Dinner tonight reminds me of my dinners in college. The nuggets are veggie protein instead of processed chicken. The instant mashed potatoes have been replaced with frozen sweet potato fries. I've added a fresh salad where I would have had another frozen veggie. The reading material is now purely for pleasure instead of for class tomorrow. A glass of homemade, sweet ice tea is the final touch that brings the memories of my southern roots swirling about in my apartment on this cold, foggy night.

EnterView

Here are my answers to James Lipton's questionnaire.  Martin asked me the questions and we recorded them so that I could transcribe it for later.  I tried to keep in my pauses and stutters.  I did add a note to explain my first answer.


What is your favorite word?

• Oubliette, it's a place you put things to forget about them. (homage to Labyrinth)

What is your least favorite word?

• (pause) I don't know.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

• Um, true stories, like honest personal stories from people's lives, um, turns me on.

What turns you off?

• The opposite, lies and deceit, things that aren't honest or don't reflect some aspect of, of life.

What sound or noise do you love?

• Cats purring.

What sound or noise do you hate?

• The sound of cars crashing into one another.

What is your favorite curse word?

• Uh... I don't know if it's my favorite but I use it a lot, which would be "son of a bitch."

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

• I would like to be a writer.

What profession would you not like to do?

• Umm, bull rider, seems pretty dangerous.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

• Uh, yeah it's all a bunch of bullshit.

It's the pits

Continuing with our current koan, I would like to discuss some struggles I've had with beauty practices currently expected of women in our society. Basically what I would like to tackle in this post is hair. Yes, we all have body hair. Some more than others but, once we hit puberty, we've all got it. And most women spend a whole hell of a lot of time getting rid of it.

Armpit hair study #1 - pop art

Personally, I have never really connected to the reasons behind shaving, waxing, plucking, etc. I know that it is considered attractive and appropriate for a woman in our society to have as little noticeable body hair as possible. I know that the same level of hair removal is not expected of men, though some level of grooming is expected.

Armpit hair study #2 - sepia

For me, removing my body hair was always something that I did to fit in. With the sole exception of occasionally shaving my legs, I never did it because it made my body feel better. Here's what I remember of my indoctrination into our culture of hair removal:

• My younger sister asking me if I had thought about shaving my legs. Before this I had been blissfully ignorant of any hair on my body beyond what was on my head. I was 13 years old.
• My mother teaching me to shave my legs with a beige, electric razor from the 70's that pulled out more hairs that it ever shaved.
• My sister ordering this green goo from Australia that was supposed to remove hair in some manner that was better and easier than shaving or waxing. I had no interest in said green goo, but was talked into being a guinea pig. Let's just say ... never again.
• Sitting on the bus, my freshman year of high school, listening to my two best friends tell me that they had talked to a guy friend of ours who said I would be really pretty if only I plucked my eyebrows. Before this I had been blissfully ignorant of any hair on my face having any impact on my respective attractiveness.
• A few weeks later in a hotel room before my grandmother's memorial service, I asked my mother to pluck my eyebrows for the first time.
• At a pool party in high school, having painful awareness of red bumps on my bikini line from where I had shaved "down there" for the first time. No sunbathing for me.

Armpit hair study #3 - colored pencil

Retrospectively, what makes me uncomfortable about the above experiences is that they reinforced for me the idea that I had to shave, pluck, etc. in order to look clean, good, right, or attractive. It's taken a long time, and being in a supportive relationship, for me to be able to start to deal with my internal conflict over my hair removal practices.

Armpit hair study #4 - thermal camera

I gave up on my bikini line years ago and buy swim wear accordingly. It's been over a year since I've plucked my eyebrows though I still have a habit of pulling them out when I'm stressed or nervous. I haven't shaved my pits since the fall and am getting used to seeing hair there when I wear tank tops. My legs are currently nice and fuzzy. I can see myself shaving them when the weather is warmer, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

No one said it would be easy

Highly edited photo of a sticker at the bottom of a street lamp near our apartment in SF.

Around the age of 13 or 14, even though my strongest subjects in school had always been math and science, I latched on to the idea that I wanted to be a novelist. A writer. I loved imagining that someday the dog-eared book on someone's nightstand would have my name on the cover.

Now even though I wanted to be a writer, I didn't really spend a lot of time writing. I wasn't bad at writing, but I didn't do it unless there was a reason - an assignment, report, paper, etc. On the other hand, I loved to read. Summers were spent waking up to pull the novel from my bedside and reading it until I could barely walk downstairs because I was fainting with hunger. Libraries weren't safe from my methodical hand (still aren't) as I would check out as many books as they would allow at a time.

Still, the idea of writing books was so strong in my imagination that I purposefully went to a university with a Creative Writing program. Ever the over-achiever, once I was at college, I found myself adding a second major - Music - and soon falling in love with Dance, which would become my minor on top of my two majors.  As a side note, they don't let students at my university have two majors and a minor any more and I totally understand why. Yet somehow, amidst all of the rehearsals, classes, performances, my campus job, studying abroad, etc, I managed to get myself in the position of writing a thesis for my Creative Writing major during my senior year.

Now a thesis for a Creative Writing major sounds great, right? No research. No documenting sources. No experiments or data. Just doing what I had dreamed about doing - writing. My thesis was to be a novela that told the story of young girl from an Arthurian story I had read in one of my literature courses. She was a minor character in the story who did an amazing thing that was glossed over to get to the more important parts about, you know, the men. So, I was going to give her a voice and story. Sadly, she ended up stealing mine.

Early on in the process, I started to panic a little bit.  Over three years, I had never created a habit of writing so actually making the time to do it was very difficult. And when I did make the time, I couldn't think of anything to write. After a few months of struggling, I had pretty much psyched myself out. My story revolved around my character doing nothing over and over again. I couldn't articulate my problems to my advisor, so I just kept trudging along, alone and afraid of when everyone would find out that my work wasn't really going anywhere.

Needless to say about three weeks before my thesis was due, the lack of anything substantial in my writing came to light. And the stress and negative feedback from my advisor over the following weeks was enough to make it completely impossible for me to write for the next two years. Slowly over time and with help of amazing mentors in the dance community, I was able to begin writing again. It's been seven years this May since I graduated from college and I still struggle with writing today.

But each little step - carrying a notebook around to jot ideas in, writing a grant for the organization I worked for, starting a blog with my mom - is helping me get over the trauma of that experience and to continue struggling towards my dream of my own dog-eared book.

Time for a New Koan

What is the nature of struggle? I believe I am not alone when I say much of my life has been about struggle. How are we going to make ends meet this month? What are we going to do about fixing the car? Are we able to meet the needs of our growing family? How can I possibly find the time to do that? How am I going to get my needs met when I feel compelled to give to meet the needs of others? The list is endless and surprisingly familiar to many people. If there are different questions raised by the nature of struggle, the fact we all find the subject relevant in our lives is telling. Simply put, struggle is contending with an opposing force or an adversary. Life is struggle. Just the very act of sitting, standing or walking puts our bodies in opposition to gravitational forces. For some these ordinary movements are not easy, especially if there are physical limitations due to age or infirmity and so even simple things we take for granted can be a struggle. But is struggle necessary? Consider this story.

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. On the day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the moth for several hours as the moth struggled to force the body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. It just seemed to be stuck.



Moth resting on the sidewalk



What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening was the way of forcing the fluid from around the body of the moth into its wings, so it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the moth of health. www.inspiring-quotes-and-stories.com/emperor-moth.html

I wrote a poem over 20 years ago about emerging from a cocoon.

Creation is a process ongoing. From the point of origin it begins, not unlike the caterpillar moving through this world. After a time of growth and development it stops,wraps in a cocoon and all its energies are directed toward the inner working. Out of this is transformed a butterfly, no longer limited to earth's surface, but airborne into the clouds. sam 1987

I was a newly trained Montessori teacher and I was eager to begin transforming my own life and those of the children I served. Two of those children were my own daughters, Lauryn and Krista. I notice I didn't mention any struggle then, just a fluid transformation. My children were little then and still close to me and I knew I could provide them with the gift of a Montessori education. But back then I already felt life to be a struggle, so there was no need to articulate it. It just was. Life is struggle, or is it? If we take the story of the emperor moth as a metaphor for our lives, it would seem we do need struggle to shape us and give us strength and character.

Our new koan is to look at the nature of struggle. What does it mean to struggle? Is striving for something beneficial? What if there were no such thing as struggle? How can we live lives of grace and ease and let go of struggle? Should we even try?

From another angle

Street stencil near the intersection of Scott & Waller in SF

I was a very imaginative child. I loved to create new games and universes to explore. I remember having imaginary friends with names and personalities. I remember creating worlds where there were mothers, fathers and children. Where there were aunts and cousins and best friends. But these were always others - barbies, paper dolls, stuffed animals, legos or video game characters. They weren't me.

I don't remember playing house very often though I'm sure I did. What do I remember of my role playing games is that they were anything but realistic. My best friend and I were vampire detectives. My sister and I were girls transported to an alien land where the floor was made of electricity and lava. I was the mayor of the town of bicycle paths that we created in our backyard. I had imaginary friends who made delectable (and healthy) onion ice cream.

SF Maker's Fair 2010

And while I have imagined and dreamed of being many things in my life, I never wanted to be a wife. Never is a strong word. Perhaps if I were able to go back to my pre-adolescent self and ask her, she would surprise me. But by the time I was wearing a bra and shaving my legs, I was pretty sure this marriage business wasn't for me.

I think many people have expected this lack of desire to marry to change over time. At some point, I have to come to my senses right? What middle-class, straight, white, American, teen-age girl doesn't want to get married? I mean it's not like we're hit over the head again and again and again and again with the idea that we can only be happy and fulfilled when we find that right man to share our lives and have a family with.

Graham and me playing for Valentine's Day 2007

I remember you telling me that you didn't want to work and that you had wanted to be a stay at home mom. And to be honest, it didn't make any sense to me. I was proud that you worked. That you supported our family financially as well as emotionally. I knew that it was hard, but it made sense. It was part of who you were. It was part of who we were as a family.

You and me walking at Lands End in SF

I hear what you are saying about not advocating for women to all be wives. I hear what you're saying about people being cared for and nurtured. But I wonder if it really means embracing this idea of a wife. Redefining, shifting, un-gendering, re-imagining what wife means maybe. Unpacking, illuminating, dissecting, retrieving the values within the idea of a wife and retaining them definitely. But holding onto the tradition of a wife? Not for me.

Looking Back

 Who needs a wife? The short answer is, we all do. But this is a blog and we are about the written word, so I shall delve a little deeper. The word wife comes from the old English wif which really means woman. The topic has produced a couple of books in recent years, A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom and more recently The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston for those who want to really explore it historically and in the context of our society today. But here is my take on it. Growing up in the sixties gave me an opportunity to see some radical changes in the meaning of wife as the role of women in society underwent major changes. I grew up in a household dominated by women as I have no brothers. The expectations for me to eventually meet a man and marry and have children were no doubt present and expressed both verbally and non-verbally by my parents and immediate community. But I also felt that I could pursue my own interests and have a career due to the social climate of the day and the relative enlightenment of my parents. What did I want? I wanted to marry and have children and take care of a household. Not like the Donna Reed caricature or other media representations I grew up watching, but a true, keeper of the keys, household manager because I believe when you truly manage a household, it is a job and a full time job at that.

Lauryn and Krista...we can only guess at what they were discussing

How have women managed over the last fifty some years to be wives and mothers while working another full time job? I can't say how others have managed, but for me it meant sacrificing one for the other many times. I am not sure what my husband and children would say about what kind of wife and mother I have been, but for me it wasn't optimum. When I was working, I needed a wife and I was working all the time. Now for some this means hiring a nanny or a housekeeper to do those routine duties of cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, minding the children. For most households though this is a luxury and not a reality. That was the case for me. Oh you say, what about the husband. Doesn't he have a responsibility to share in these household duties? My answer may be obvious, yes he does. I was very fortunate that my husband did help.

But here is my truth. Running a household is a full time job. Basically in a marriage where both individuals are working a full time job outside the home, dividing the duties means working a part time job after hours and again it comes down to what is an optimum situation. There are only so many hours in a day and something usually has to give and it is probably going to be the unpaid, unglamorous, routine chores of cleaning and childcare. Whether one wants to choose (as I would have liked to) to take on and do the job with creativity and purpose or to delegate those important tasks to someone capable (and pay them well) is a personal choice. I am not advocating only women can be wives, but rather that we embrace this ancient tradition since it is something we all long for, to be cared for and nurtured. To have our personal space in order and meals prepared with love is something basic for all of us; men, women and children. So who needs a wife? We all do. It is a noble endeavor.