One thing you can always count on me and my spouse, Lee, for is that we are looking to do better in the world, do better for each other, and do better for ourselves. Lately, Lee has been listening to dozens and dozens of podcasts, and is especially fond of the Daily Stoic. It applies ancient philosophy to today’s world, and has been really useful for Lee. There are books and such, too, which you can find on their website.
Simulated coffee drinking.
Most mornings while we are drinking coffee, Lee asks me some question he found in one of his podcasts, which helps me be more conversational (I’m not a morning person and neither is he, really). One of his questions is where I got the recent topic of saying “I get to” rather than “I’ve got to.”
Today he asked me what I’d done to make something better. He said it could be big or small, for myself or someone else. His answer was that he’d improved a QuickBooks process (which makes things much better for Mr. QuickBooks).
I fumbled around a bit, but then realized I’d posted a status on my public Facebook page last night that asked people what made them smile that day.
I think 65 comments is pretty good engagement!
The answers cheered me up, cheered other readers up, and no doubt helped people who maybe didn’t smile much that day remember something good that had happened. It was a simple thing, just asking a question, but it encouraged conversation and made people’s day better.
I got the idea from Joanna Fontaine Crawford, the minister at Live Oak UU Church, who very often asks questions like this and gets a lot of conversation going. I like it, because the questions come across as genuine, and not like it’s some meme that you are supposed to be guilted into copying and pasted. Asking a REAL question gets real answers!
Let’s see how this one goes over…
So, think about it, what have you made better so far today (or yesterday)? Ask yourself this every day, and your mindset can’t help but shift to a more positive direction. I plan to keep up both the practice of asking good questions and checking on what I did to make something better each day.
Our little blog about the ranch and personal growth has been growing steadily, and one measure of that is the number of followers we have on WordPress. This afternoon, I was greeted with this:
Ta da!
We have 300 followers, and from what I can tell, a good portion of them are actually other human bloggers, and not some SEO-seeking drones, or whatever you’d call that.
Thanks, as always, to everyone who reads, comments, shares, and provides your perspectives. I may not be infallible, but I’m lovable, so you tell me.
I hope I sometimes encourage you to think or move outside your comfort zone. My favorite blogs do that for me!
Lee has been talking about how he’s reframing sentences that start with, “I’ve got to…” with the alternative of, “I get to.” sometimes a simple change like that works!
I’m trying it right now! Earlier I’d asked Lee if he wanted to pick me up some lunch, and join me, since I didn’t see anything at home I was hankering for. He suggested Domino’s, which has sandwiches we like and curbside pickup.
He checked with the folks working across the street, and they said they would join us, and said what they’d like.
Scenic Domino’s. Formerly the fancy farm and ranch place.
Next, Lee told me he has an online meeting he must take from home, so he can’t come (hmm, why did he agree before and choose the venue?). So, I practiced saying, “Oh boy, I get to drive to the pizza place.” And I envisioned getting out of the dungeon and such.
I got there. No food. Had to talk to the owner. Turns out, Lee had ordered in Rockdale. I “got to” call Rockdale and cancel, then “got to” go inside the store and re-order. (Or, I could have gotten to drive to Rockdale and pick it up, which would mean cold soggy food.) Luckily, I was the only customer in the restaurant, we were appropriately masked, and no one touched my credit card. And I have hand sanitizer in the car!
Now, I “get to” sit in the car while the food is prepared. That’s okay! I get to blog, and I came up with a blog topic for today. Score!
Later
I got to have a nice chat with the pizza store guy, and still had piping hot sandwiches and pizza when I got to the office. We all enjoyed our meals.
Mine was actually the veggie sandwich.
See, that have to/get to reframing really does work! All’s well that ends well!
In my recent post about core values, I mentioned the guiding principles I try to live by:
Treat others how you’d like to be treated
Assume good intentions
Love yourself
They go along with the core values I figured out that drive me: kindness and making a difference.
It’s important to revisit your intentions, because if you don’t keep putting them out into the world, they can just whither away. The stressful state most of the people I know are in right now makes it really, really easy to wallow in sadness, self-pity, or anxiety. People like me can experience some remarkably steep reversals in their personal growth (which I’ve mentioned a couple times in the past few weeks, so no need to beat that topic to death).
Perhaps I need this sign in my new office. Image by @dunahoot217 via Twenty20.
The Golden Rule’s been taking a bit of a beating lately, when I find myself getting defensive and not saying things as kindly as I would prefer to, and it doesn’t help that my attempts at being kind or helpful can get misinterpreted, leading to an ugly circle of no one being at their best. Knowing perfectly well that the only person whose behavior I can change is mine, I’m going to try to stay a little more in my higher self zone, and not reflect back any perceived negativity I get from friends and family, which might stop the circle.
I deserve a reward.
This brings me to the second principle, of assuming good intentions, or that everyone’s doing their best. This topic has independently come up a number of times in the past few days, which hints that I need to be paying attention, right? Just as I’m firmly convinced I’m doing my best (in other words, I’m not being mean just to be mean…ever), I need to remember that the people I interact with are ALSO doing their best. I have fallen down at this lately, but now’s the time to get started again!
Honestly, I don’t know anyone who’s a jerk just for fun (I’ve probably de-friended them), and even people with whom I disagree strongly usually have their hearts in the right place or are acting sincerely based on their upbringing, culture, and experiences. I have started practicing making a conscious effort at remembering that, and am amazed at how differently I act. I just need to keep it up, both online and in person!
Coming from a place of love, not anxiety!
Bear in mind, friends, that sometimes things just don’t come out like they are intended, whether from tone of voice, lack of tone of voice (text, email, social media posts), nervousness, or simple misunderstandings. I need to give people a break. People need to give me a break. We all need to give each other a break!
Lee and I have been having some good conversations on these kinds of things lately, and we’ve found our own communication getting a lot easier. I am proud of both of us! By explaining where we are coming from, we can be a lot easier on each other’s little foibles (because we ALL have them!). His support and understanding mean so much to me (along with some other helpful and trusted confidants). I suggest you try out the whole assuming good intent thing on those closest to YOU and see how it works!
Teamwork! That’s what counts, say the blue hairs (this picture is from early 2019 I think).
And one more thing, if anyone is at their best right now, firing on all cylinders, working at 100%, and treating everyone they encounter with kindness and understanding, please write a book really quickly and tell the rest of us how you did it! It would be a major blockbuster best seller!
As hard as it is to find equilibrium these days, I’ve always found my bird watching greatly helpful. Birds just keep going, breeding, eating, being silly. Here are today’s examples.
Finch Family Time
You can’t get close enough to us to get a good picture, Suna!
Over at the Hermit Haus/former church office, I’ve been watching all the birds raising families. The mockingbirds have moved on, but the house finches are doggedly determined to produce offspring in the carport. They built one nest in one corner, but lost that little one. Wah.
But, lo and behold, the second nest they built has a little fellow in it. Yesterday I got to watch it waggle its little head around as its parents looked annoyed at me from the telephone wire a few feet away.
When I arrived this morning, two finches flew away, and I realized a second pair was building a nest in yet a third corner of the driveway. I guess those little notches make house finches feel secure (and it IS hard for roaming feral cats to get to them).
The new nest, in the back of the carport, right by where I park.
Earlier Today
As you may know, the past few weeks I’ve been going over to the sad, grass-less horse pen to give Fiona and Apache hay to tide them over until their evening feeding. Well, Big Red, the only hen remaining from my previous flock, has figured this out. She didn’t get to be the only one left by being a slow learner.
Most mornings, there she is, barreling toward me, wanting her sunflower seeds NOW. The only morning she didn’t show up, Chris found that she had laid a sad egg with no shell (she’s old), which has inspired me to get her some actual chicken food this weekend to go with her seeds.
Today, she didn’t charge at me, because she was busy. I’d actually been wondering where she got her water, because I’m not sure her old water trough made from the cabin’s air conditioner runoff is still there.
I may be old, but I’m still quite flexible!
Well, there she was, on the edge of Fiona’s water bucket, drinking away. It was so cute. That inspires me to keep filling the bucket all the way up!
The water was great! Now I’m ready to have my sunflower seeds.
Once she was done, she strode right over and requested her morning ration. I just love that hen.
I’m sending love and hopes for understanding for each of us. Remember, everyone you meet is pretty stressed out right now and probably not at their best.
That seems to be my hobby this week. It would be funny if it weren’t so annoying that I’ve managed to offend or upset people every time I try to be nice and accommodating. As my dad always said, I really have a way with words. Just not a GOOD way sometimes.
Anita said it’s Mercury in retrograde, so I’ll go with that. But in advance, if I’ve said, written, or texted something you think is horrible and mean, I probably lacked proper tone or was so wound up trying to not be offensive that I failed. Inarticulate is putting it mildly. These are not my favorite points in my life. Luckily they do get better!
And on that note, I do have a couple of happy little things to share. One is that the inexpensive little rug I got from Overstock.com turns out to really go well with my “guest chair” for my new office. (Ironically, there will be no guests in the chair until after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, so it’s now my “reading chair” instead.)
Rug goes well with the chair. Not so well with the box under the chair.
About as exciting as a trash can gets, I guess.
I also got a nice rustic office trash can, so that I can leave the generic black plastic one in the dungeon office. Yay.
And look how pretty the reception room at our new office looks, now that all the saws are gone and the floor is clean! It’s almost done, too. Of course, it’s just for show until some time in 2021, but maybe we can have internal meetings there, or something.
Just a little tape to remove, and sparkly things to add to the chandelier. Oh, and the blinds.
Virus news around here is really sad. I don’t mind one bit being careful if it means someone else might stay healthy! You all take care, and try to choose your words more carefully than I do, because foot-in-mouth disease is unpleasant in so many ways!
Cheerful last image! The big mirror above the fireplace goes up soon! Woo!
Just a quick funny story (to me). Historical background:
I bit my nails until I was 14. Nothing could stop me; I was an anxious child, and this was one of my soothing behaviors. I really had me some ugly hands.
But, a week before high school started, I got it in my head that I could have a new start, not be the outcast I was in 8th grade, and look a bit better. So I managed to not bite my nails. I can remember being so proud in Algebra I class, when I could see some white at the ends of my nails. The next week, I painted my nails red.
I interrupt this story with a picture of the lamp I had to bring into my dungeon office, because the ceiling light has gotten so dim I can’t see. Note bonus mask holder!
And, most weeks for the ensuing many decades, I’ve painted my nails. I had them really, really long in high school and painted them all sorts of interesting ways (this was LONG before nail salons and professionals; it was all me).
Once I got to college and had to type a lot, the nails got a little shorter, but other than a few brief hiatuses, my quest for great nail polish and perfect nails never ended. I always acknowledged the irony that other than a love of sparkly eye shadow and long nails, I was quite the gender neutral dresser.
Actual Story?
Fast forward, and I’m still an eccentric dresser, but also with weird hair color. I hardly ever had professional nail applications; I can remember one in San Francisco in 2005…and a few toenail polish bonding events.
But, I got a hankering for something that lasted longer, and started going to the salon here in Cameron, where I really like the people and had a lot of fun. This blog has plenty of photos of my fanciful dip nails. I miss them.
Ah, so pretty.
When the coronavirus stuff started, the salons all closed. I also noticed that the tools they used on my nails had made them paper thin. Well, I thought, a great chance to let them heal a bit.
The salon opened back up, but because of my very visible position at our personal assistance service, and my own desire to stay away from people who are less careful than me, I haven’t been back (and I am so sorry for the nail salon people!).
Golden toes. These should be fine.
I found some Essie products that are really strong and last over a week on my fingers, and have been using them. Except last time, I discovered you need to pay attention to what you’re doing.
I put the top coat on as my base coat, and the base coat on top. Hmm, I thought it didn’t come out very shiny. Then, two days later, all my fingernail polish peeled off in sheets. What? I did NOT take a picture.
Base coat left. Top coat right. Memorize. I am not compensated for this photo.
Yep, that shiny top coat doesn’t stick well to bare nails. And that grippy base coat isn’t shiny.
In fact, the base coat is so grippy that it would stick to my socks when I wore my boots. I kept the toenails for another week, but wow am I happy to have changed to the right polish in the right order.
Nice bronze nails, all my own. And a bonus donkey.
You’d think that after doing my own nails for so long, I’d learn to read the bottle of clear polish and put on the right one! Sheesh!
What have I learned here? Give me 15 minutes and I can write a long blog post about almost anything. Back to work.
Expressing anger is difficult for some of us. Like Suna.
No, no, I’m not angry about anything right now! Everything’s just fine. If you’re looking for drama, I’m not serving that up today. I’m just thinking about anger.
The book club meeting I attended on Zoom (of course, no in-person meetings for me!) today got on the topic of things we struggle with, and I brought up the fact that I totally suck at getting angry. The very nice women in the meeting were quite supportive of me, and the consensus was not to expect to be great at something you don’t have a lot of experience with. They were right!
Even as a child, I was discouraged from getting angry. If my little brother pestered me, I was told to, “Just ignore him.” And if I did get angry and yell or hit back after he slapped me, I’d get spanked. So, I fairly quickly learned to bottle up any anger I had and to arrange things to be as peaceful as possible in my little world.
Hence, I ended up an Enneagram Number Nine. As the website says:
Key Motivations: Want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.
That probably also explains my initial resistance to change, even the good kind!
Another thing it explains is why I’m always trying to attain some sort of spiritual transcendence; it’s another way to escape the real world. At least I have the sense to know that “the only way out is through,” and am coming to terms with the whole “life is suffering” concept.
I just want peace, calm, and goodness.
Anyhow, I am just not good at getting angry. Not one bit. I can’t be like Anita, who often declares she’s angry at this that or the other, but she just expresses herself strongly. I keep thinking, “Why is she angry at that? I’m sad, or…some other emotion.” That’s because if I try to express anger, it scares the pee out of people. You know, I also learned from my family or origin how to have a very sharp passive-aggressive tongue. Oopsie.
I can actually remember the two or three times I let my anger spill out. After one time, I was never able to bring myself into a particular community again. I just left and never came back. I’ve only let myself express anger at my spouse a couple of times in all these years. I just get snippy on occasion then over-apologize for it.
Dang, I need to learn how to legitimately express anger when it’s appropriate without alienating people forever, or turning into a sniveling ball of self-abuse. Those seem to be my main anger outlets. I’m just not equipped to be an angry mob of one, I guess.
As my colleagues in the book club pointed out, it helps to remember you’re angry at a situation. (And I point out that it helps to remember people are doing the best they can; though when I’m angry at an institution, that’s hard to apply.) If kindness is my main value, I should apply it to both the object of my anger AND me, right?
This is pitiful, I know, but I Googled “effectively express anger” (because, how else do you figure things out these days?) and I got this:
Address An Issue Immediately Before It Escalates. …
Take A Walk. …
Try A Simple Breathing Technique. …
Try Getting In Some Rigorous Exercise. …
Journaling Can Be Another Great Way To Process Anger. …
Well, I do all that! That’s not expressing anger, it’s dealing with anger. Those are all the tools I use to maintain the peace and not rock the boat.
I turned to that oracle of knowledge, WikiHow, who went through all the above anger mitigation techniques that I already do, then FINALLY gave some advice on how to express it! That’s what I wanted!
Choose to express your anger assertively. Assertive expression of anger is the most constructive way to express your anger. Assertiveness cultivates mutual respect for each other. You can still express your anger, but you do so in a way that doesn’t accuse the other person. You have mutual respect for each other.
Assertive communication emphasizes that both people’s needs are important. To communicate assertively, give the facts without making accusations. Simply state how the action made you feel. Stick to what you know and not what you think you know. Then ask the other person if he is willing to talk. [9]
For example, you might say: “I was hurt and angry because I felt like you were belittling my project when you laughed during my presentation. Can we talk and work this out?”
Enough with the background colors. I didn’t mean to make you all sick.
Yeah! That’s it! Work on my tone!
After reading the information, I conclude that it makes sense, and sounds a lot like things I’d read in all my “how to get along with people” courses and such. I know I try to do that, and sometimes do. I just need to work on my tone, maybe.
In any case, if you have an anger problem, whether inability to express it or expressing it too much, how have you dealt with it? There’s so much anger in the world right now, it might be helpful to band together and make an effort to say what upsets us without turning the audience away completely.
I shall now go look at nice, happy animals and stop with all this self-analysis.
I’ve been reading Dare to Lead, a book by my favorite self-help author, Brené Brown (it’s the book I reviewed the horrible workbook for back in March). It was my suggestion for our work book club at Planview. What’s annoying is that I keep leaving the book in Austin, so I hadn’t been able to keep up, but I finally remembered to bring the book back with me last time I went, so I was able to read the correct chapter for today’s meeting.
I sure am glad I did, too, because some of the things she has us thinking about in the “Living Our Values” section helped me focus on not only how to effectively deal with coworkers, but also how to deal with the people around us during this pandemic.
Brown stresses that it’s important to know what your personal core values are, because they will affect how you make decisions, work with others, and treat yourself. And you only get to have TWO of them (though she lets you pick sub-values, too). I already had a set of guiding principles I live by:
Treat others how you’d like to be treated
Assume good intentions
Love yourself
But, I’d never chosen a mere two words to be my core values. So, this was an interesting exercise to me. I ended up with these:
Kindness
Making a difference
Kindness was easy. I have always tried my best to be kind, and feel unsettled and weird if I realize I’m not being kind (usually it’s when I find myself being judgmental, and I have to snap out of it).
I had a little harder time figuring out that making a difference was the correct second value. I thought about my past career choices, both paid and volunteer, and I easily saw that what tied them all together was that I wanted to somehow make life easier for others and/or make a genuine contribution to society with what I did. I’ve helped build educational databases, taught college students, helped mothers breastfeed, gave organizations and individuals websites to spread their messages, written documentation and made e-learning for software companies, etc. In all of these, I’ve been wanting to make a difference to people.
When the time came to do our book club meeting, the three of us who’d made choices of values had all chosen kindness as one of them. I guess I’m not as original as I thought, or people who choose kindness tend to join book clubs! I really enjoyed talking to the other three women who were able to attend today, and am almost glad it was a small group, because we were able to share in meaningful ways. Thanks, Zoom meetings!
Other parts of the little chapter I read hit me very close to home, too. Brown included a discussion of keeping this in mind when you are providing feedback:
“…everyone is doing the best they can.”
p. 215
It helps me with the judgmentalism I need to worry about so much in myself. And it’s my core belief that I need to assume good intentions. And like Brown’s husband Steve pointed out, even if it’s not true, things sure work out better if you just go ahead and make that assumption.
Hmm, can you try to do that with people on the other side of the mask wearing issue? Of the other political party? I find that to be a very interesting exercise, and one that I wish I could share further. It’s not that, “Oh, why can’t everyone just get along,” plea. It’s more of a, “Where are the people I disagree with coming from, and can I use that information to better understand them, or to talk to them productively?”
The kindness art I have on my bulletin board.
I’d really like to talk with more people about these core values and how they inform our lives, and these really helpful attitudes toward other people. Feedback is welcome!
I can tell I’m getting back on a more even keel, mentally. I did a good job, for once, dealing with one of those, “It has been reported that X has happened, and if you don’t fix it, dire consequences will befall you,” conversations pretty darned well. I just asked the information-bearer to ask the person with an issue to get in touch with me, and I’ll be happy to work with them to take care of things. And I repeated that. I just don’t need third parties telling me so-and-so said this about me or that about me. I’ll happily talk to them. That’s probably not as FUN for the person in the middle to participate in, since they don’t get to lecture me in that scenario, but it sure clears up misunderstandings. (I’m sure everyone has the best of intentions; it’s just easier to communicate directly.)
Is it a clown? No, it’s Feisty Suna. Colorful!
Though I still haven’t heard from the person who needs to talk to me, I am doing my best to remedy the problem, anyway, because it’s a good thing to do. Treat others as you’d like to be treated. I mostly manage it! If you don’t let people bully you and put you down, they can’t make you feel bad, so that’s why I feel feisty. I’m just going to do my best to be strong, confident AND kind.
Before picture.
As for my office, today it’s getting a beauty makeover! We decided to put the really pretty wall hanging that looks like a quilt square made of tin, brown wood, and white wood under my mantel piece, to make it look like a unit.
It looks like it was made to go together.
After realizing there was no way to actually hang it, Chris screwed it into the mantel, and now it looks like one big, beautiful unit.
Then we went mirror shopping.
WHAT, you went out in public and SHOPPED?
No, no, we went upstairs where there are four or five different mirrors that came with the Pope Residence. We tried two of them, and one really was a winner.
On its way to goodness.
When installed, it will block the hole where the woodstove pipe used to be, so we don’t have to run a fake pipe in front of the mirror. The faux woodstove will be fine without it, since it’s electric.
I have cleaned the mirror and frame, but we are leaving it brown. There’s enough white in here now.
The other mirror we brought down is made from an old window. We are going to paint it white for Kathleen and then put it in the other bathroom instead of the tiny mirror that’s there now.
Here’s the window mirror, cleaned but not yet painted.
Oh yes, the counter top edges got dry enough to trim. That’s a manual job with a big metal file, when you don’t have a cabinet shop. But, they look good now.
I also ordered paper towel holders and a toilet paper holder, so all the bathrooms will have appropriate cleaning accessories. However, I’ll patiently wait until my office is finished to put art up. I’m so patient. Who are you kidding? I’m not, but things can only go as fast as they can go in these times.
But wait, there’s more! Here’s the stained plywood to finish the stair area. The wood looks like zebra print or something. I actually like it.
The Hermits' Rest 