Links to Fun-to-Visit Sites

Here are a few sites I've visited when I need a fresh round of inspiration or a mental break:

Purple Caravan
Simple Abundance
Artful Blogger
Writers Almanac
My Secret Garden
Armchair Travel
Moondance Literary Magazine
Skirt! Magazine

Happy browsing!

How to Get Better Service by Phone

This is the piece I'd love to post on some worldwide blog read by customers and callers everywhere. Doing what I've listed here won't guarantee perfect service but it will greatly increase the chances of a satisfactory outcome in a shorter amount of time.

• If you're calling to solve a complex problem that involves a number of transactions or previous conversations, organize your thoughts first. See if you can summarize the problem and your request in 2-3 short sentences. Jot down notes if it helps you.
• If the situation has been going on for a long time (insurance claims following an accident come to mind) write down the steps you've taken to solve it in chronological order. Better yet, start keeping a log of contacts and correspondence right off the bat if the situation looks like it might involve a lot of time and money. Save any email messages, letters and (do I really need to say it?) bills.
  
• Always get the name of the person to whom you're speaking - always always always! If something needs to be verified, the person who answers your next call will need to know who to ask. If the service rep has to track down an anonymous coworker out of several hundred employees, you'll lose a lot of time.
• Have your account number, card, invoices, letters or whatever you need at hand before you make the call. It will save everyone time. For identity security and privacy reasons, many organizations these days won't look up accounts or give out information without an account number.
  
• If you'll be asking for information, have a pen and paper handy as well.
• When you're on the phone, speak at a moderate pace and give the phone rep the verbal space to respond to you. Many of us tend to talk too quickly (and sometimes too much) when we're upset. However, a barrage of words delivered in a breathless rush won't make sense to the person on the other end of the line.
• Before hanging up, ask the service rep what further steps will be taken. She may not be able to guarantee a specific outcome (big decisions are made by managers, not front-line workers) but should be able to tell you roughly how your request will be processed.
• Keep in mind that the person answering the phone probably doesn't have the authority to waive charges, grant refunds or approve exchanges. If she offers to transfer you to a supervisor, she's not blowing you off; she really can't do anything more.
  
• Finally, ending the conversation with a thank you generates good will. The positive feeling will be passed on to later callers, plus you'll leave a good impression behind you.

May all of us have a stress-free holiday season!

Working Graveyard? We'll Miss You at the Table

A post on Target's Facebook's page posed a question: why the big deal over stores opening at midnight on Thanksgiving when police, EMTs and other emergency workers are on the job 365/24/7? What's the difference? I've been thinking about this a lot because a fair number of friends who are fellow writers and musicians work in retail. I used to live there myself.

One answer to the poster's question is apparent in the name of the general vocational field, emergency services. Recreational shopping is not an emergency need.

But there's something else. To me it feels like the midnight opening crosses a line. Four a.m. is tough enough for employees who have to work that shift but at least it's possible for them to spend an afternoon with family or friends. Having to be at work at 11:00 pm makes celebrating the holiday virtually impossible...and it's to accommodate shoppers, not to save lives. What will be next - opening on Christmas afternoon so that the people who tore open their packages that morning can rush in to make exchanges?

One of the ways that families, communities and cultures create bonds is by celebrating together. That's why holidays are important. I sometimes wonder if the disengagement I've seen in some of the young people I've worked with comes from not feeling like they belong to any kind of community. Gathering with others for the sole purpose of enjoying each other's company and experiencing gratitude together, while only a start, would be a step towards building that community.

But this kind of bonding is difficult if a large number of members can't be present. In nonessential services, the customers' wishes drive decisions. However, it's not reasonable to let customer whims or "the market" dictate all decisions, especially when the decision has the potential to be detrimental to employees.

And in the end, it might prove detrimental to all of us, even those who never have to work on major holidays, by making it harder to bring people together as well as making our culture even more stuff-driven than it already is. When a large number of us lose something, we all eventually lose.

Some day, maybe holidays will actually be days of rest for everyone who doesn't provide emergency services. Meanwhile, my thoughts are with the people who will be clocking in at 11.

Creative First Aid During the Holidays

Some people thrive on the hectic pace and high sensory stimulation the holiday season brings. The buzz brought on by party-shopping-concert-glitz overload jumpstarts their creative circuits and they find themselves sprouting ideas like a lawn produces dandelions. I have a friend who writes more stories during December than her total during the other 11 months of the year.

I'm not one of these people. Most years I'm tempted to shelve all pending projects (even the ones with deadlines) until January 2. But because of said deadlines, I can't. Over the years I've found a few tactics that work for me. Maybe they'll work for you too.

• Set aside daily time to get away from the audio, visual and social noise. I find that going for a solo walks in the rainy twilight helps me clear my mind. Even if you don't love rain you can eventually get used to walking in it if it's not too heavy.
• Take an evening to just read in bed. If you have young kids, they might enjoy reading in bed with you. Choose a book that doesn't tax your brain too much.
• Begin each day (or as many as possible) with 15-20 minutes of silence. Just sipping your first cup of coffee in peace can clear a small space in your mind that will allow you to process information later. Thirteen years ago when I had a full house, a day care business at home and numerous school-parent commitments, getting up at 5 so I could have an entire hour to myself saved my sanity.
  
• Depending on what your creative outlet is, try playing around without any goals in mind. If you're an artist, doodle. If you write, spend a day writing just for fun. See if any usable ideas eventually surface.

Keep in mind that different people need different approaches. Super-social extroverts energize themselves and consequently renew their creative juices by playing with others. Quieter types often prefer to play alone, at least for while. Experiment to find out what works for you.

A Student Again: It's All in the Process

Sometimes it's good to learn or relearn something not in order to get a specific benefit, but only for the process itself. Even if you have definite goals and a burning desire to meet them, if you don't occasionally put the outcome aside and fully experience the process of learning and practicing, the outcome won't be as good as it might have been. There's something about the act of careful focusing that makes any subject come alive.

I started lessons again because I want to explore musical styles that are significantly different from what I've done during the past 25 years, with an eye to forming a group later. However, I realized I didn't have the necessary skills to do this. In less than a month I've rediscovered how important it is to be in the moment when practicing, to focus on doing just one thing.

Someone once said something to the effect of "How you do one thing is how you do everything." Whether you play, sing, paint, write or whatever, doing it mindfully helps you towards approaching every other activity with similar care.

A Student Again: Real Musicians Practice

Years ago I saw a sticker on a car in my neighborhood that said, "Real musicians practice." This would seem obvious but in fact I've gone through periods where my skills deteriorated because I fell out of the habit of practicing.

Some of us enjoy practice more (or in my case, less) than others. I find it much easier to play with the rest of a group than to go over scales, exercises and songs all by my lonesome at home. However, the fact is that with much of the music I've played over the years, I would not have been able to make any meaningful contribution to the group if I hadn't practiced my part first. From experience I know how annoying it is when group rehearsal time, which should be used for blending, gets bogged down because someone doesn't know her own part. I've been that person myself on occasion.

Exercises can be tedious but without them, most of us will never get to the fun part, playing the music listeners want to hear. This time around I've decided to approach doing scales and intervals as a sort of Zen-like focusing exercise, doing everything in a mindful way, paying close attention to details on even the most seemingly simple piece. Since I'm not generally a careful-attention-to-minute-detail person, this will be a challenge.

But maybe the point of learning something new isn't just mastering the skill. Maybe it's also about approaching learning itself in a new way and developing traits like patience. Seen from this perspective,it's possible that the benefits of practicing anything at all will spread throughout every area of daily life.

A Student Again: Beginner's Mind

Three years ago, when good fortune made me the temporary caretaker of a cello, I began taking lessons with a teacher in the neighborhood. I hadn't tackled a stringed instrument since high school guitar class and a short stint playing bass in a classmate's band. I was starting at the bottom.

This experience is serving me well as I start lessons again, this time in a whole new genre. I've had to work at chipping away certain prejudices (classical music is somehow "higher" than popular or folk music), become willing to make mistakes, and return to practicing very basic skills. At 52, I'm my teacher's newest and oldest student.

The Zen tradition has a principle called beginner's mind. Cultivating beginner's mind requires putting aside preconceived ideas and the egotism that can come from previous accomplishments. The student has to turn off her own mental chatterbox, quiet down and listen. She has to be willing to say (if only in her own head), "You're better at this than I am," "I goofed," or "I'm just not getting it; can you show me how?"
Beginner's mind is know-it-all's opposite.

No one is ever too old to learn something new; however, the learner needs to adopt a mindset similar to a 5 year-old learning to read. Beginner's Mind 101 is the prerequisite to everything else.

The Creative Home Business: You've Gotta Love It

When times grew tough several years ago, I noticed that books about starting a home-based business went flying off the shelves. They included books on writing. Titles like How to Earn a Six-Figure Income Writing Greeting Card Poetry generally circulate well but during times of high unemployment they're especially hot.

At times I really felt for the people checking these books out. Some borrowers exuded such a strong mix of hope and desperation that they seemed to be surrounded by a visible aura. I'd heard of "hope in a jar;" these books seemed to be "hope between two covers."

I read many of the books as a reviewer for a writers' club newsletter. The actual business strategy advice ranged from extremely helpful to "I'm glad I didn't buy this." What a startling number of them failed to mention is the idea that a business in the creative arts (maybe in any field) works best if you'd love what you're doing even if you weren't getting paid for it.

If you don't love it you won't be able to spend ten-hour days (that's the average working day for the owner of a full-time startup) doing it. You won't be able to convinced prospective users or buyers that they need your services. You'll turn out mediocre work. Eventually you'll be bored.

Making a little extra money on the side by freelancing or selling your crafts at fairs is one thing; trying to earn a full-time living running a business in creative services is another. Working from home doing what you choose to do sounds easier than it is. I enjoy working with kids but during the years when I ran a daycare service for children at home, I worked days that were much longer than any of the school jobs I'd held. Even being as frugal as I was, my net earnings were so low I was embarrassed to report them on the tax forms. Child care is one of those businesses that makes no sense unless the care provider loves doing it.

I believe that working in any of the arts, even "applied" ones such as graphic design or copy writing, run on the same principle. If you're down to your last dollar and need money now, they're a risky choice.

But if you're already doing something you love and are willing to start small while holding onto your day job, your chance of eventually being able to leave that job are better than average. Every full-time freelancer or artist I've ever met has started out by doing what she does not for money but for love.

Creative Spaces: A Garrett of Your Own

If you're going to have a serious (or playful) artistic practice, you need a space of your own. This is true even if your creative spells are limited to one or two hours a week, whenever you can get a day off work. This is so important that once you rope off a corner of your own, you'll wonder how you got along without it.

Nearly 20 years ago my family and I were living in a single-wide mobile home on a tiny lot. It was way too small for four-sometimes-five people but it was ours for the time being. My "office" was a small drafter's style desk and a stool in the corner of the kitchen. There were no walls. Half the time I'd sit down to work only to discover that a family member had "borrowed" certain supplies or spilled something on a manuscript. I didn't get much done during our four years there.

When we moved into our current house I got half a room for my office - my husband got the other half - and discovered that if we used a portable screen, we each had a reasonable amount of privacy. For the first time in years I was able to finish projects, partly because I didn't have to pack away partially finished work at the end of each day. It was safe on my desk.

This sense of safety is critical to creative success. You need a place, no matter how small, where you can be free to rough out ideas that aren't ready for the glaring light of public exposure yet, and where you can leave half-finished projects out without fear of others messing things up.

A tiny desk in the middle of a common room isn't ideal. If you live in a shoebox, try to find an empty corner, or empty a full corner of its junk. With a folding screen you can create an ersatz wall. This wall won't shut out noise but it will make a sort of psychological barrier to interruptions.

It's just as important to teach family members or roommates that when you're behind this wall, you're at work. In some households this can be a real struggle - enough to merit an article of its own. Claiming your own space is the first step.

Uninspired? Try Being Aimless

Several weeks ago I ran out of ideas for just about every project I was working on. When I was younger I would have made desperate stabs at brainstorming. These days, however, I take a break if I don't have an urgent deadline.

One of the most effective ways I've found to mentally relax and refresh is to spend one of my free afternoons just wandering up and down Main Street. I don't go with any itinerary. If I feel like stopping in one of the stores just to browse, I do. During these times I've made some surprising discoveries and gotten ideas that have given me a second wind.

Letting your mind drift can be the most productive thing you do.

When Drowning in Overtime Hours, Here's How to Stay Afloat

A good friend from college days told me about a recent dilemma. She's being offered so much overtime at her job in retail management that she's had to pull back on what she considers her real work, designing & creating hassle-free baby clothes. She'd just begun to experience some success in her new side business, selling at her local farmers' market, when an unexpected repair bill upset the balance. She feels like she should accept the extra hours but at the same time, resents the time they'd take away from her fledgling business.

The question of whether to work overtime (if there's a choice in the matter) always poses problems for those of us who have serious side businesses or activities. I haven't met anyone who's never felt the need for more money at some point. At times I've put in extra hours, often more than I've wanted, in order to pay off a bill or buy a big-expense item like a new computer. For some of my friends the "opportunity" for overtime never ends.

How do you set limits? And how do you keep slogging onward when you're discouraged because it seems like all you do is work, you miss practicing your art and worst of all, it feels like this particular stretch will never end?

Many years ago when I worked for an educational agency full-time while getting my freelance business off the ground, this was how I approached overtime:

• First, I decided to take extra hours only if I needed extra money for something specific. My regular earnings were enough to live on if I made thrifty choices. I'd noticed from observing friends in more highly paid industries that always having a lot of money didn't solve anything; high earners got used to certain amenities which then became necessities.
  
• When an actual need (such as new tires) or a justifiable expense (plane fare for family reunion or a desktop publishing program that would cut project times in half) came up, I calculated the amount I'd need to pay for it, then figure out how many extra hours I'd need to work for it. From there I could decide how many extra hours to accept.
• During overtime episodes I found it helpful to daily remind myself why I was doing this. A visual reminder such as a picture of what I was working for made it seem more real. And when the extra work was especially onerous, I'd count down the hours by crossing them off one by one in my calendar.
  
• After each spurt of overtime finished I immediately got the rest of my life, including writing & editing, back on track.
• If extra work came up when I didn't need the money or had a lot of freelance assignments, I turned it down. Among other things, this let my bosses and co-workers know that I was willing to go the extra mile some of the time but not every time. It insured that I didn't become the unofficial go-to person every time the office stayed open for an evening event. Precedents and expectations can be extremely difficult to change once they're in place.
• I always tried to keep the big picture in mind: while my day job provided an important service to the people who came to our agency, it was still only one part of life. The work I did at home provided an equally important service to my customers. I found that it helped to think of the job as one component of what some vocational counselors call Life Work. All the components need to work together.
  

It doesn't matter what you do during your off hours; if you're emotionally invested in it, it's important. Approaching overtime or extra-hours requests in a thoughtful way and using overtime earnings for a premeditated purpose may be the best way to show respect for yourself, your time and your work - all your work.

Breathe!

Here are a few visualizing exercises I've found helpful during stressful times. When I began experimenting with them I was skeptical (a familiar condition for me) but have found that practicing them on a regular basis has made a difference in how I respond to certain situations and people.

Guarding against negative stress: a self-protection exercise

• Get into a comfortable position and relax in whatever way works best for you.
• Visualize yourself being surrounded by a globe of light. You can make this light whatever color you want but make it clear, so that you can see through it.
  
• Give it a flexible but definite boundary, one that will screen out the harmful effects of negative interactions.

This is an especially good exercise if you're feeling the effects of others' emotions or energy, such as happens in a job with high public contact.

Grounding yourself: an exercise for when you feel overwhelmed

• Relax in whatever way works for you.
• Visualize yourself as a sort of human tree. Make your trunk as solid as possible, extend your roots downward and anchor them into the ground. Send your branches upward.
• Just sit for several minutes, holding the image of being rooted firmly in the ground.

This exercise is especially helpful when life feels like it's getting out of hand, you feel spacey or you'll be dealing with someone who always tries to knock you off-center.

Heart Breath: an exercise for practicing neutral compassion

• Take slow deep breaths but imagine your breath is coming from your heart area. As you inhale, imagine compassion for yourself filling you up. As you exhale, imagine that compassion flowing out of you into the world.

I've found this exercise especially helpful in developing an attitude of neutral attention so that you can help others in a way that doesn't drain you.

Finally, a mindfulness exercise I learned from a Zen meditation instructor: every hour on the hour, simply stop what you're doing, take three deep breaths and say to yourself "Here I am." It's a great way to train yourself to stay in the present rather than drifting off into the past or future.

Call it "Work.," Change Your Life

When I first began resurrecting my part-time writing & editing career three years ago after being out of the game for more than a decade, I tried to accommodate this plus all the other activities in my life. These activities included a job (first PT, then FT), everything at home and matters that came up with friends and family. Do I need to mention that this tactic failed miserably and that I ended up with a lot of half-finished projects?

Looking back, I think that even though I've made a secondary income via freelancing for most of my adult life, I'd never treated it as work or given it the same serious attention I gave to jobs working for someone else. This was partly due to my own perception and that of everyone in my life that writing isn't "real" work even if it makes money.

In the previous paragraph you could substitute any passion for "writing" - photography, playing in a band, starting & running a foundation or community service, making & marketing handmade items, running an urban mini-farm - and you'd be dealing with the same perceptions. Those perceptions include the ideas that if it's fun, if it doesn't make much money, and if you're working on our own, it's not real work. You can tweak your office space, hold endless family meetings and incessantly experiment with scheduling but if you're not clear in your own mind that your passion is also serious work, all these measures will fail.

Some of my fellow writers haven't liked this idea because "work" is such a serious word. It connotes drudgery. All of us have days when we're just putting in the hours. Those who hold jobs with extremely repetitive tasks or have little self-determination & opportunity for exercising personal judgement might feel like work is all drudgery.

But it doesn't have to be that way merely by definition. Think of "work" as simply doing something useful, either for yourself or others. If you feel called to do a certain activity - you have a strong sense of purpose behind it - then calling it "work" is the first step. This will provide a reference point for making daily decisions that move you forward rather than keep you stuck.

For example, if you've planned to spend four hours this afternoon proofing copy or drafting a grant proposal, and a friend calls (knowing it's your day off from your job) asking you to help her cousin move, you can say, "Sorry, I'm working this afternoon." If you feel a smidgen of guilt even though you don't even know this friend's cousin, you can add, "I'll bring over some beer later."

My own writing life shifted dramatically when I began seeing it as part of a many-sided career that includes the job, freelancing and things for which I don't get paid at all but are part of the purpose I've defined for myself. It's becoming progressively easier to say "no" to activities that feel out of sync. I have fewer problems with prioritizing.

The most noticeable difference, however, is that the various things I do are finally feeding each other rather than fighting each other. I've seen this happen with other people as well; life starts to feel like a patchwork quilt with an actual pattern rather than a bunch of little fabric squares. A few of these people live seamlessly in a happy state where each relationship or project gives & receives energy from everything/everyone else.

I hope to reach that state someday. And I hope to see you there too.

When Encountering Turbulence, Just Bounce Along

Here's a bit of Zen wisdom I encountered years ago - it's saved my sanity on a number of occasions: if you expect some chaos during turbulent times, you're less likely to be thrown off-base when it arrives. To me this sounded refreshingly sensible after years of trying really hard to believe that positive thinking always produces positive results.

Great expectations have almost become a requirement in our culture. There's a real push to believe that it's possible to solve all problems quickly & painlessly, find a dream job or build a dream life, and have whatever our hearts desire. Acknowledging limitations is "negative." These beliefs have been around as long as I can remember but they've intensified during the last decade. Best-selling books like The Secret create entire programs to help readers manifest their wishes.

The positive-thinking push has given many of us the idea that it's wrong to feel discouraged, that if we don't get what we wish for, we've failed somehow, and that we have to press on no matter what we might be dealing with at the time. I call it fighting the turbulence.

I believe that expectations are important but sometimes keeping up a relentlessly forward-looking outlook is just too much work. During transitions, steep learning curves or rocky times, just staying afloat is a reasonable goal. It's okay to let big goals and projects lie fallow during these times.

I used to try to keep ahead of everything all the time, even when the house was burning down, figuratively speaking. These days I cut myself more slack. And I've found that bouncing with the turbulence is less strenuous than fighting it.

Dealing with Feelings: The Action/Feeling Logbook

What if you're working on a creative project, maybe even one with a deadline, and you're broadsided by a spate of severe self-doubt or a depressive slump? I'm not talking about the occasional mild blah feeling; I mean the sort of blues where it's hard to get out of bed.

In the short run, taking a day off to mope might work. However, if the day stretches into weeks, you'll quickly find yourself in a rut. And here's the killer: allowing yourself to slide into that rut will not only stall your creative life but the extended mope time won't help you feel any better.

Here's a tip from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Sher. Briefly acknowledge your feelings, tell them "We'll talk later," then get to work. After you're done for the day, note your accomplishments in an action/feeling logbook.

Buy a notebook (the spiral-bound ones work well) and keep a log of every action you take towards your dream or project each day. Then note how you felt that day. Chances are good that you'll find, as I have, that your productivity isn't as connected to your feelings as you'd initially thought. If you record your accomplishments regularly, you'll reinforce the fact that you don't have to feel great in order to produce good work. You might even end up feeling better anyway.

During the "wishcraft" groups I've led, I've found that this simple trick works especially well for people who by temperament tend to get bogged down in their own emotions. Participants who seemed to be Introverts and Feelers (Meyers-Briggs temperament indicator), Idealists or Dreamers (the Enneagram personality system) or "Blues" (the color personality system) benefit from following structured action plans and keeping accomplishment logs. Since feeling follows action, you have to act first in order to feel better.

Keeping a log takes only minutes a day but it can make a huge difference in your creative life.

Part-Time: hey, it's still work!

I know a lot of people who don't work 40-plus hours per week in a single place. Some work for pay part-time, by choice - maybe they're semi-retired, are homeschooling their kids or are extremely dedicated to a volunteer commitment. Others are piecing together several PT jobs because they need the money and are trying to make the best of it. Still others, including me, hold a PT job while running a side business. Many of those side businesses are in what's often called creative fields - graphic design, handcrafted items such as ceramics, copy writing or performing, for example.

A part-time patchwork life can work but it takes planning. Here are some issues I've had to work out, and tactics that have worked for me:

• If you work a PT job and have a sideline venture at home, be very clear with yourself that your at-home work is work, and treat it accordingly. I know writers who have thriving side businesses and writers who keep spinning their wheels. One enormous difference between the two is that the thriving writers regard their writing as a career, not a pastime they indulge in when they don't have to be at the office. If you take your venture seriously, you'll give it the time and attention it deserves, and potential clients or buyers will be more likely to respect you.
• Take time to plan your week. This is especially important if your job doesn't involve a set schedule or if your hours are flexible. If your job doesn't have predictable hours, you can still plan "office hours" for your side business; you'll just have to find a way to keep potential customers informed. Having a Facebook page for your business is probably the most flexible way to do this, since you can post your "available" times weekly.
• When you've scheduled yourself to work at whatever you're doing, work. The fact that you can edit copy at 3 a.m. and spend the evening (which was supposed to be spent editing) babysitting your niece doesn't mean you should - unless you want to, of course. If people know that you do some of your work at home, you might start hearing things like, "But you can always paint - after all, you work at home. An hour her and there won't throw you off." Practice saying "I'd like to help but I have to work."
  
• Accept that some people in your life, maybe including some FT co-workers, will refuse to take your contribution to your workplace seriously or will treat your side work like a trivial indulgence. Nearly a decade ago I worked PT at a local elementary school and ran a business on the side. Predictably every Friday afternoon, one of my FT co-workers would make an edgy remark about how lucky I was that my weekend lasted till Wednesday. Pointing out that I'd spend most of the supposed weekend making sales didn't have any effect. After I'd been at the school for several months I realized that this woman didn't like her job, regarded work itself as a curse and seemed to be chronically angry at anyone who wasn't in an office 40 hours a week.
  Just smile and change the subject.

Hopefully it'll work for you!

ReVitalize: Improv Your Act

Several summers ago I took a class called Improvisation for Theater and for Life. Maybe "life" came before "theater;" I don't remember. The class was taught by Clark College theater instructor Marci McReynolds. This wasn't like other theater classes I'd taken in the dim past. Everything we practiced related to what's sometimes called real life. I learned totally new (to me) things about myself. And I made a number of friends who are still close. For me the class, like my first few years with my writers' group or my experiences singing with other people, was a spiritual experience.

Maybe the most valuable thing I learned that summer is the importance of the art of improvisation. In my workaday life I make plans but if they fall through, I have to improvise. The previous 20 years, with kids & schools & earning a living & the money tightrope & all that stuff, one thing piled on top of another, made me feel like I was flying by the seat of my pants (I'll have to look up the origin of that expression) ninety percent of the time. This bugged me. Shouldn't I have gotten it "right" much sooner?

After taking this class I realized that a successful life doesn't require eliminating surprises. You can't! However, as theologian and amateur trapeze artist Sam Keen says in his book Learning to Fly, it requires knowing how to fall when you make a misstep. You will fall, but if you practice your falling skills, you won't get hurt badly. That's another subject for another time.

During that summer I came to realize that perfection is an illusion It's okay to not plan sometimes. Planning and spontaneity are two ends of a continuum. Sticking to either extreme causes problems. But if you're primarily one type, then dabbling in the other type's way of being can be revelatory.

I tried improvising on many occasions: when I didn't know where the plot to my story was leading; when I didn't know what to tell Noel after all his tactics towards solving a social problem at school didn't work; when I didn't know the answer to a customer's sticky question. On many occasions I felt like both I and the person I was trying to help were muddling through. But in the end, even though the results might not have been what I'd originally wanted, doors opened.

These days when I'm stuck, I stop trying to plan my way out of the bag. Instead, I improvise. This applies to writing articles, making music, finessing a difficult transaction on the job, working with a tricky weekly schedule or trying to help a friend. It took me awhile to build my set of life improv skills.

If you're not comfortable with improvising, start out slowly. Designate a half-day (maybe on your day off, to start) during which you'll wake up without a plan, ask yourself what feels right, and allow yourself to be led minute by minute. The leading might come from demands from people around you but it might also pop up in the form of inner urges, unexpected opportunities and serendipity. This is where the magic begins.

After awhile you can have improv days at work. You'll still be doing what you've always done OTJ but you'll give yourself permission to allow the unexpected to happen, and to deal with it as it happens.

Practice your flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants skills until you're able to designate an entire week for life improv. This doesn't mean you forget your kid's dentist appointment or fail to show up for work. Improv is not irresponsibility. It means that you don't micro-plan so that every second of the day is filled. It means that you leave plenty of room for happy accidents, as coach Barbara Sher calls them, to happen. It means that Spirit (or God or the universe or whoever) can finally whisper the answer to that vexing problem in your ear and you'll hear it because you're not yapping away to yourself.

Try it.

ReVitalize: Working Outside Your Genre

Sometimes you've been doing your art form successfully for so long that you don't notice that you've started the slow descent into boredom, that you're operating on autopilot or that your once-vibrant work reads/looks/sounds rote. I suspect that certain popular authors have reached this point. Their latest novels lack the certain something - a sense of enjoyment or playfulness, maybe - that first drew readers to their earlier books.

At this point it can be tempting to redouble your efforts to whip your current work into shape and enjoy doing it...or else. Maybe this works for some people. It never has for me.

What does work is a tactic I call genre-jumping. Get out of your cozy but confining space for awhile and do something new to you. If you want to jump-start your inspiration in a big way, choose a genre or form that seems worlds away from what you're doing now, something you'll have to learn from scratch. For example, if you normally write cozy mysteries or family sagas, try doing a thriller. If you write articles, try poetry.

This also works for inspiration-gathering. If you tend to read within a certain genre, venture out. If you listen to pop, explore world music or blues. If you've been locked into a special niche for eons, you might have to force yourself to wander, sample and explore.

At other times, however, you might be aware of a budding interest; you just haven't given yourself permission to explore it. In this case all you need to do is pay attention to what's grabbing you at the moment and follow the trail. For the past 25 years I've played and sung with groups that specialize in Renaissance music. For the first decade or so, I listened avidly to everything from that period that I could get my hands on. Lately, however, I find myself drawn to recordings by female jazz and blues singers. I'm not entirely sure why. But I've learned to trust these nudges.

You'll know when you're ready to resume your previous path. Or not. Sometimes working outside your genre provides you with fresh inspiration that you can take back to your familiar work. Sometimes it confirms that you're due for a more long-term change.

Either way, you win.

DiY Learning: Languages

Want to learn a new language but don't have any free evenings to sign up for a class? Or just prefer studying on your own?

Learning a new language is one effort where you can only progress so far on your own. Eventually you'll have to practice speaking it with others. These resources can start you off:

Free Web Tutorials, Podcasts & Online Classes

• ielanguages has a mix of both free and fee-based resources. Some of these include links to the website owner's graduate school research projects in linguistics, for those of us who like the nitty-gritty on how languages start and develop.
• Word2Word is a clearinghouse site for free online courses and chat sites, translation services and dictionaries.
• The BBC has a languages site that offers basic tutorials and games for skill-building
• LangMaster offers 3 levels of the most popular European languages.
• For listings and descriptions of languages of the world, some with links to informational or learning sites, see 123 World
  

Portable Audio Resources

• For quick travel phrase audio learning, I've liked the In Flight and Rush Hour programs.
  
• Speak in a Week also provides basic phrases but the learner also needs use the cue cards that come with it.
  

DiY Learning, "Just Because"

You don't have to be a registered student to go back to school if you just want to keep learning for its own sake. To start, here's a short list of websites that function as clearinghouses for online learning tools, wiki sites & open courses/lectures:

• Open Culture is the site I'll go to first. It has an enormous array of online resources in many topics, and the site itself is easy on the eyes.
• Free video Lectures features academic lectures delivered by university professors.
• MIT's open course ware site contains a mind-boggling list of options in humanities and sciences.
• Open Learn is a British open university site with much of the same comprehensive content.
• Stanford offers courses via iTunes and Berkeley's webcast service enable students to subscribe to regular feeds.
• Wikiversity allows users to contribute content as well as study it.

If you prefer offline options, check out the Great Courses series. Most library systems carry at least some of their offerings.

Work & Life Balance: One Step at a Time

Once upon a time, I wasn't looking forward to the week ahead. This wasn't because I had a feeling of impending doom, the kind you get when you're dreading an upcoming event such as a biopsy or call to a creditor. It felt more like slogging through a morass. The bog didn't contain anything unusual, just extra helpings of the normal stuff: more work hours, projects coming due, long days and a number of social events that should have sounded fun but felt like obligations. Sound familiar? I think we've all had times like this.

This time around, though, I decided to try something new to me. I'd been reading several books, including How to Want What you Have by Timothy Miller (1996) and Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn (2005). Although I'd been dabbling in the practice of Mindfulness for some time, I still had difficulty staying "in the moment" for more than five minutes, and remained skeptical about its ability to address boredom and other low-grade irritations.

But I'd have to get through the week anyway, whether I took a new approach or not. I liked Miller's triad of practices - attention, compassion & gratitude. I made a mental note to check in with myself every hour of each day that week and do the suggested activities. In addition, I decided to try focusing solely on the day I happened to be in, rather than mentally bolting toward the end of the week or the next day off. Again, a challenge.

But something strange began happening when I started to practice the difficult art of staying in the moment. Time (and unpleasant tasks) didn't pass any more quickly; time itself, however, became less important. I stopped noticing so much whether it passed quickly or slowly. When I consciously refrained from attaching an emotional value ("boring" or "hard") to an unpleasant task and just did it, it became, if not easier, at least less stressful.

Mindfulness doesn't guarantee a happily-ever-after, but it can create a more contented now.

The Road Already Taken

Since I work in a library, I notice trends in reading. Since I also write, I monitor which trends seemed to be tapped out and therefore inaccessible to those of us who didn't get our manuscripts, proposals or blogs finished in time. This is a summary of what I've noticed - the good, the bad and the Gone:

• The Intrepid Woman Traveler genre of "creative non-fiction." I noticed the rising energy of this particular niche ten years ago, when publishers such as Travelers Tales were in business. This genre encompasses first-person stories that are probably best known today as Eat, Love, Pray stories. They're largely travel memoirs written by women who took off on a particular adventure on their own and lived to tell about it. If you're a female Boomer who recently hitchhiked through Bali with all your worldly possessions in a 5-lb backpack, forget about the book contract. It's already been done.
• The Chick Lit for Midlifers sub-genre of fiction (my husband calls it Hen Lit). I shelve so many of these, I've lost count. Fifteen years ago, Elizabeth Berg began writing novels that highlighted the experiences of midlife women. I've read many of her novels; they're spot-on. Since then, however, the field has been overrun by novels that feature women with soggy marriages and grown kids who spontaneously take off on an adventure that leads to self-discovery, a new career and a renewed marriage (never a completely new partnership, as opposed to midlife guy novels).
• Memoirs that spotlight food in any way, i.e. Julie and Julia. We all have our favorite gustatory experiences but the idea that every one of them deserves to be written up and disseminated is new. Personally, I love the idea of the Web & social media as one big idea-sharing orgy. But expecting to make money from it is different. This field has been trampled over like a garden of too many tomato plants.
• Cozy mysteries whose appeal is based not on plot but upon the historical, geographical or professional setting...especially if they include recipes. I can't count the number of fiction paperbacks I shelve that fit this description. If you're submitting a synopsis of a regional or historical novel (and it highlights food!), you'll have to make it really special.

The point of all this isn't to discourage you - it's to let you know what you're up against. If you have a message or experience that you really want to get out, consider just setting up a blog. If you've had a unique travel experience that might benefit other 40+ women, consider self-publishing. And if you write fiction, which falls under different rules than non-fiction, realize that you need to define your niche before you start marketing your work.

Where Work and Art Meet

Several years ago I read an account of one man's experiment in reality-bending. He decided to spend a week living as if he was already the artist he was aspiring to be. No more "I will be" or "I want to" - strictly "I am." For this guy the experiment was a real stretch; he was working graveyard shift in a job he hated, couldn't sleep during the day and had lost even the will to paint, let alone the inspiration.

He still wanted to find more congenial work and start painting again but suspected that, just possibly, his luck in these areas wouldn't turn until something inside him did. During the course of his week as a portrait painter who happened to earn his living as a custodian, he began to see his world with new eyes. By the end of the week he was ready to actually move forward with concrete plans. His story didn't imply that bad jobs don't exist or that you can wish yourself into a new situation. Rather, it pointed out that change starts with how we think about ourselves and our own possibilities.

Even if you, like me, basically enjoy what you do for a living, it still helps to examine how you're seeing yourself whenever you're mired in a creative slump. I've decided to try the author's experiment for myself during times where something feels stuck or not "in the flow."

Maybe his idea is like the "parallel worlds" convention used in fantasy & sci fi fiction - multiple possibilities exist and to an extent, we get to choose which ones we bring to life.

Tips for Getting Satisfactory Service

Here are a few suggestions based on experience (mine & several friends) in various customer service jobs. I didn't conduct an exhaustive study or interview any "experts," but the people I polled had a number of similar comments & ideas:

• If you're calling or going in person in order to resolve a problem, gather any necessary papers, invoices, documentation, membership cards or account numbers before calling/coming. Some places can't look your record up without a member or account number.
• If the history of the problem is complicated, jot down the steps you've already taken, with dates if possible. If you're dealing with a large institution, you might never get the same customer service rep twice. Even if everyone with whom you speak has taken meticulous notes, you might still have to repeat information you've already given.
• Realize that customer service professionals want to help you resolve problems or issues. A satisfactory resolution is win-win. It helps to approach staff with an expectation that a mutually acceptable solution will be reached, rather than in a me-versus-them frame of mind. This might sound obvious but everywhere I've worked, it has always surprised me how often customers seem to be in fighting mode when they enter a dialogue.
  
• This applies to all of us - staff and customers: develop the habit of seeing people as individuals, not primarily as parts of an organization. This prevents the us-versus-them mindset that gets in the way of good relationships and transactions.
  

In Defense of Wikis, Self-Published Authors & Other DiY-ers

I have to admit I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons and all things collaborative. I love the idea that there's this enormous knowledge/information/research entity out there, with a zillion participants posting, borrowing & swapping information all at once, like a virtual flea market for ideas.

Like any other research tool, wikis have their drawbacks but I've found some good information on them. Since I've worked in both public school systems and libraries, I'm familiar with the usual objections over using information found on wikis and collaborative commons. But dismissing them out of hand isn't a useful response. According to a study done in 2005, Wikipedia had close to the same factual error rate as Britannica. As one writer on a site devoted to recording such error rates pointed out, a better tactic would be to teach students how to use Wikipedia and other such sites wisely.

Something similar is happening in the world of publishing. Fifteen years ago, beginning writers were still being told to stay away from self-publishing (not to be confused with vanity publishing). Self-published authors were suspected of lacking credibility or being hopelessly amateur.

Much has changed in the last decade. While fiction writers are still advised to hawk their novels at conventions and pitch their ideas to agents, self-publishing is perfectly respectable for writers of non-fiction. The grandaddy of all contests, the Writers Digest annual, even has a category for best self-published nonfiction books. What caused this change?

I haven't done any exhaustive studies but my guess is that enough writers became tired of spending 9 hours pitching & querying for every hour spent writing. A few brave souls said "to heck with it" and began publishing their own material. Eventually a critical mass was reached, a turning point where self-publishing became a common practice.

I'm betting that much of this movement came about because large numbers of writers realized that they didn't want to spend the rest of their lives chasing someone who could make their dream come true. Pursuing agents and publishers takes enormous amounts of time and energy, most of which could be better spent in actual writing. In cases where the author desperately wants to be published, it puts a lot of power in someone else's hands. And in the end, some of my fellow writers argue, an agented book is not necessarily a better book; there's a lot of mediocre writing out there.

DiY tools have kinks to work out. They're not perfect. But they make the distribution of information much more accessible for those who want to participate. They open to door of participation to more people, most of whom want to participate because they love their topic of choice, not because they're getting paid. They allow us to consider the possibility that maybe we're all smart; maybe each of us has something worth saying, a contribution worth making.

Making a contribution is, after all, the whole idea behind the DiY life.

DiY Art

"We are all capable of being our own entertainers and culture creators."
Hal Niedzviecki, from The Big Book of Pop Culture - a how-to guide for young artists

Niedzviecki, who edits a 'zine called Broken Pencil, wrote his book to encourage young people to write songs, make films or engage any of the arts simply for the joy of making things and sharing them.

He points out that not long ago people routinely entertained themselves by singing, dancing or storytelling. They made useful items that were beautiful as well as functional. They didn't compartmentalize Art-with-a-capital-A. If someone from the colonial period or the Middle Ages visited any American city today, he'd probably be puzzled about the way we figuratively lock creativity away in a mental cabinet as if it's something rare and breakable, to be brought out only for certain occasions. Or he'd wonder why so many of us now insist we're not creative or that we "can't" tell stories, make something with our hands or sing just for pleasure.

What Niedzviecki calls Independent Popular Culture (as opposed to the commercial kind) is all about reclaiming the universal drive to create, and every person's right to create & share our creations. Just because.

When It's Time to Go Live

Maybe you're happy doing whatever you love just for yourself or to share with a few friends. But what if you want to eventually publish, sell or perform in public? What steps should you take first? How will you know when it's time?

I'll use writing as an example since it's the field with which I'm most familiar.

• In an earlier post I mentioned the importance of critique groups for writers who aspire to publish. Ongoing participation in a good critique group with at least a few long-term members who know the writing business can help you grow immeasurably, both as a writer and in business sense. Find or form a group. Willamette Writers has chapters throughout the greater Willamette area, including Clark County. You can also try Craigslist. Even word of mouth works if you know enough people in the area.
• Join the equivalent of a professional association. Membership in local groups such as Willamette Writers carries many benefits, including reduced fees for conferences. If you work in a specific genre, you can join the national organization and see if the national association of writers in this genre (for example, Mystery Writers of America) has a local chapter.
• Make use of the feedback you're given during critiques, especially if its given by someone who's been through the process before - preparing query letters or a synopsis, pitching to an agent or negotiating a contract. While you don't want your work to be revised beyond recognition, experienced critique-ers can help you make acceptable changes.
  
• Make necessary revisions and run them past your group several times. I liken the process to running something through the laundry; when your copy comes back from the group nearly free of editing marks -when it looks clean - it's time to get ready for the next step.
• Consider entering contests (for artists, juried shows; for performers, open mikes) if the entry fee isn't prohibitive. Evaluators and judges are human and each has her own subjective preferences, but even so, any feedback you receive will give you an idea of how your work measures up to professional standards.
  
• Above all, learn the protocol for submitting work in your field. This will help you avoid making the sort of faux pas that let everyone know you're an amateur, such as sending a full unsolicited manuscript to an agent. Even if the fine points of business bore you, you've got to learn the accepted procedures if you want publishers (or gallery owners or talent agents) to take you seriously.

These points are just a start. For more information, look up any of the Writers Market publications or the equivalent resource for your field.

No Customers Were Harmed (Or Inconvenienced) During the Making of This Haiku

If your day is so packed that you can't actually sit down at your customary spot - for writers, this might be a home computer; for musicians, a piano - for a serious work session, try carrying a tiny spiral notebook with you and jotting down ideas that pop into your head during the course of the day. You might find yourself getting little one-minute bursts of inspiration that don't directly relate to your current project but still keep the energy going. Or keep your brain awake.

Awhile back, people in the department where I work began writing haiku responses to things that happened during the workday. I can't even remember how it started but it generated some funny poetry. It takes as little as a minute to write a haiku poem - the same amount of time it takes to write down a phone message or scan the email in-box - so you can limit your haiku jottings to random quiet moments. You can even compose haiku in your mind while attending to a rote task like washing dishes or stuffing envelopes. Unless you post your work somewhere (like the door to your office), no one need know about it.

The One-Minute Creative Wake-Up might be the only thing you need to get through an especially dull day...and you never know what might eventually come out of all those snippets.

Making Dreams Real: Stopping a Downward Spiral

When embarking on a big project such as writing a novel, this is how the process goes for some of us:

1. Set a goal - the bigger the better so that we'll be really motivated. How about drafting three chapters every day?
2. On Day 1, still bursting with enthusiasm, we meet that goal.
3. On Day 2, real life intrudes and we fall a little short.
4. On Day 3, an emergency at work or home - two co-workers call in sick, the pipes burst -and we manage to draft only a few paragraphs. Despondent, we decide that maybe this writing business is a pipe dream so we quit entirely for a week, spending our free time eating potato chips and watching reality TV.
5. On Day 10, we realize we're bored so we resurrect the Big Goal. And the process starts over.

Until recently, whenever I resolved to cut back on coffee (about every 3 months), I pulled out all the stops. Not only did I resolve to cut out all caffeine cold-turkey, I also decided to go vegan and start jogging 7 miles every day, and...

Then when I inevitably fell short of my goals, I'd get discouraged and quit entirely. I'd ruminate on what a slacker I am (Dr. Pamela Peeke, author of the Fit After Forty books, calls this "bottom-feeding"). And nothing was accomplished.

In the cognitive therapy branch of psychiatry, they call this all or nothing thinking. Many of us fall victim to it at some point. Only within the past year have I started a habit of challenging all or nothing thinking, and learning how to be happy with what I'm able to manage on any given day.

If you find that all or nothing thinking is a challenge for you, try this for a month: keep a log of everything - every little thing - you do towards reaching a goal each day. Some days your log may read, "Drafted my synopsis" or " Practiced for an hour." Other days it might say "Wrote 50 words," or "Played one scale."
After a month you'll see just how many small steps you've taken - you'll probably be surprised at how much you've actually been able to accomplish. This in turn will motivate you to do more.

Incidentally, an accomplishment log can help stop any downward spiral in its tracks, whether you're on a creative mission, trying to lose weight, paring down debt & saving money...any challenge that seems overwhelming at times. By stamping out perfectionism and accepting good-faith efforts, you set yourself up for success.

Everything I Know About Hard Times I learned from M*A*S*H

One of my favorite remedies for a bad day / hard times at work (or anywhere else, for that matter) is watching our old M*A*S*H DVDs. For me, the misadventures of the gang at the 4077 have a way of putting my own issues in perspective, whether they involve an unpleasant interaction on the phone or floor, equipment problems that refuse to be resolved, or knowing that after work there'll be an urgent repair job waiting at home.

During one really bad year that involved working a physically demanding FT job, helping Noel deal with bullying at school, getting through the deaths of several family friends (all of them under 55) and seeing another friend through cancer treatment, my entire family would collapse on the couch at the end of the day and watch several episodes with me.

After thinking it over I figured out why the show resonated with all of us - the characters used coping tactics that would serve well in real life:

• Laugh. Dark humor is actually a pretty effective way to help yourself and those around you get through times when you're all flying by the seat of your pants. Savor harmless but annoying absurdities instead of trying to make sense of them. If your day was too ridiculous to be real, pretend you're in a sitcom and it's your job to make people laugh.
  
• Keep serving the people you're supposed to serve as best as you can, even if you're so tied up with red tape that you feel like a mummy. I've worked for a number of large entities, including several school districts, and I know that trying to make meaningful changes can make you feel like you're hurling yourself against a concrete wall. Several friends who work for major retailers say that some of the decisions that come from Headquarters are incomprehensible; they could only have been made by people who aren't working in the field. This seems to be pretty universal. You have a lot of company. Keep slogging onward.
• If your life workload has become so grueling that you're chronically fatigued, perfect the stop-drop-and-nap technique of catching up on sleep. Watch a toddler if you need instructions. Start taking 10-minute catnaps during breaktime (if the staff room atmosphere is crowded and chatty, putting on a headset is a good do-not-disturb signal) or pack a blanket in your car for half-hour rest during lunch. Take another 10 before diving into post-work drama once you get home. You can't spend the rest of your life surviving on sleep tidbits but it got Hawkeye & BJ through those 24-hour nonstop surgery runs.
• When you're eating on the fly, watch your c-rations. Nuts, whole wheat crackers and fruit can get you through an afternoon. Twinkies and Mountain Dew won't. And any caffeine after the first post-lunch cup of coffee probably won't help your alertness level (I've tried. Many times) and it may give you a headache.
  
• Like the dirty-sock rotgut the good doctors brewed in their tent, it helps to have a comforting ritual or two at the end of the day, although you might want to think twice about their poison of choice. Sometimes you need to forget things for a little while. Keep a stock of movies, music, chocolate - anything that doesn't destroy your health.
  
• Just as important - keep a few hours a week for things you enjoy, such as your ballroom dance class or bunco group, even if you think you "shouldn't" take time for yourself. During high-stress times, you need them more than ever. Col. Potter didn't stop oil painting. Klinger always coordinated his accessories, even for KP. As the late great Kate (Hepburn) said, "Never forsake those activities that keep you out of the nuthouse."
• It's okay to lose it sometimes. Bawl, hug your teddy bear like Radar, play practical jokes like BJ, or drive your car out to a deserted field at the end of the world and scream like Major Houlihan. Just don't blow out your vocal chords.
• Hang together. Now isn't the time to shut yourself away from friends. If you're afraid of taxing their ability to listen & empathize, have an official gripe session (a friend of mine calls them "Whine and Cheese" parties) where everyone gets to cry on each others' shoulders. After the air clears, go out together & do something fun.
• Finally, remember that everything eventually ends. Even the Hundred-Year War didn't last forever. If a particular event, such as graduating or finishing a tough project, will help the hard times ease up, post a day-by-day countdown sheet on your wall and mark off each day when it ends.

Maybe you'll even have your own personal V-Day celebration.

Making Dreams Real: Down to Earth Organizing

Earlier I posted a link to a book list about organizing. This has been a challenge for me most of my life. Several weeks ago I realized that since the youngest boy (sorry, young man) has moved out, now is the perfect time for me to not only get the office and other rooms of the house in order, it's also prime time to decide exactly what I want to accomplish during the final third of my life, weed out everything that doesn't support this purpose, decide on a mission statement and set up systems that support what I'm trying to accomplish.

Are you at this point? Are you a 40-50 something faced with an empty nest, the sense that this is an opportunity, and you don't know what to do? Do you freeze at the mere thought of going through all that stuff, your electronic or paper records or your calendar? Check out Susanna Sanka's site. The author of The Not So Big House provides a downsizing system that works because it gets to the heart of why we cling to clutter, whether it's old stuff, outworn activities or relationships that don't serve us well.

Another great resource is Marilyn Paul's It's Hard to Make a Difference if you Can't Find Your Keys (Ouch! Even the title hits close to home for me). She tackles a number of myths & misconceptions, one of which could be stated "Organization is the opposite of creativity. A messy house is the sign of a free spirit." I call it the Free Spirit Myth. I half-believed it for a long time because childhood experiences bore it out.

I grew up in an extremely organized family - well, at least my mom put forth a valiant effort considering she had a husband, six kids and chronic medical conditions. We were a Navy family and my mom's house had to pass the white glove test until my dad went civilian. The house always met basic standards of cleanliness, and there were places for everything. I didn't get to do fun stuff like draw or read until I'd done my chores, and sometimes those seemed endless.

One of my classmates was also the eldest of six kids but there the resemblance ended. Her mom taught art and stitchery classes at our church and school. Whenever I visited, I reveled in the opportunity to play, make something or help my friend assemble a snack without having to clean up immediately afterward. Piles of stuff lay everywhere. The kitchen was a hive of happy activity. Visiting this friend provided some relief from the exacting standards at my house. I stitched, wrote and drew there in a way that I wasn't able to do at home.

Because of this, I carried into adulthood the notion that order and creativity are mutually exclusive. In college I believed that I had to choose between a professional attitude towards time & money, and a life-as-art viewpoint. Over the last 30 years I've reaped plenty of evidence that this dichotomy doesn't work - it's hard to be a respected freelancer if you don't return calls promptly because you've lost the phone number again - but until the empty nest, it didn't feel like something I could tackle.

Marilyn Paul confronts the Free Spirit Myth in her book. She really challenges the notion that being an artist means leading a tempestuous, disorderly life.

I've come to realize that she's right. We all have a right brain and a left brain. Each of us may be predominately one or the other but we're capable of using both. When a right-brainer says "Oh, I just can't balance my checking account/get my files together/learn about this internet stuff," it's as much a cop-out as a primarily left-brained accountant or engineer saying "I'm just not the creative type." Nonsense, both of them.

If you're looking at a wonderfully blank datebook because the kids are adults and thinking that you might like to try one of those activities you put aside 25 years ago, Sanka and Paul provide good preludes. Make sure your spaces, priorities and calendar support your goals.

The Importance of Being Honest - Critique Groups

One way to bring grounded "earth" energy into a creative practice is to join a critique group. A good critique group will give you valuable feedback on your own work, allow you to learn from others by critiquing their work, and provide support in a form you can actually use. I've belonged to a critique group for about ten years. During that time I've learned more about the art & craft of writing fiction from this group than in any class I've taken or book I've read. I wouldn't dream of submitting a piece to a publication without running it past the Main Street Writers at least once.

I was fortunate to find a good group, one that gives honest criticism but in a friendly, helpful spirit. I've heard nasty stories about dysfunctional groups where members rip each others' work to shreds. I've also visited groups where members merely stroke each other, providing plenty of warm fuzzy feelings but notspecific information that would have helped me improve my writing. When you're first starting out in any art form, you'll mainly need simple encouragement and appreciation. If, however, you want to advance beyond basic skills, you'll have to seek out constructive feedback.

Here are some things to look for if you're in the market for a critique group:

• Do the members genuinely like each other even if they differ on certain issues? Is there an atmosphere of mutual respect? Is criticism presented with the intent to help? If so, good. If people seem catty or deliver critiques laced with thinly disguised barbs (I've sat in on a few of these), you'll probably end up as unhappy as they are.
  
• Are participants glad when one of their members scores big - signs on with an agent, receives an offer, etc? If so, it's a good sign. However, if the group is composed of hyper-competitive one-uppers, run far far away.
• Is there a reasonably good mix of personalities and temperaments? In my group, several of us are "forest" people who read for overall impressions and several are "tree" people with a sharp eye for detail. It helps immensely to have both types represented. It's also good to have both introverts and extroverts, both quick thinkers and ruminators, both taskmasters and gently encouraging types.
  
• Of course schedules vary and life's events can get in the way of meeting, but is there a core group of members that meet consistently and reliably? It's almost impossible for a group to be effective if it doesn't have a group commitment to meet & work regularly.
• Does the group take care of work first, saving the socializing for afterward? It's great to catch up - I consider my fellow critique group members to be friends as well as colleagues - but it's easy to get sidetracked unless there's a strong sense of purpose.

Here are a few steps that make up a healthy critique process:

• First, positive feedback: what's right with the work?
• Second, criticism framed in a positive light: what improvements could be made?
• Third, specific suggestions: how could those improvements be made?
• Finally, offers of help if appropriate: how can I help my colleague make those improvements?

Artists, writers and performers who aspire to "go live" with their work can't afford to skip the critique process, especially if they hope to eventually sell or make a living at it. But critiques don't have to be painful - it all comes down to finding the right people.

Making Dreams Real: Balancing Earth and Air

"Don't stop building castles in the air; that's where they should be. Just don't forget to put foundations under them." Paraphrase of Henry David Thoreau's famous quote.

In the healing system of Reiki there's a concept of balancing energies called Earth and Heaven. People who tend to be primarily Earth are practical and they get things done. But sometimes they also find it hard to imagine different ways of doing & being, or with trying new solutions. A Reiki practitioner would say this person has too much Earth.

People you'd call Heaven types have great imaginations with no problem dreaming big and visualizing outcomes; however, they often lack the practical skills to plan and execute their dreams. These people are said to have too much Heaven.

Everyone who works hard on the job and at home & still wants to do things that are personally meaningful needs a balance of Earth and Air. For the next few weeks this is what I'll write about. I'll include a lot of resources that have helped me in my own quest for balancing imagination and practicality.

One excellent place to start, for those of you who learn primarily through reading, is with Martha Beck's Finding Your North Star. Among other things, Beck talks about four different personality types, their strengths and weaknesses in the making-dreams-real process. Some people are great dreamers, some get off to strong roaring starts, some are slow but steady workers, others like laying foundations by doing introverted tasks like research, while still others enjoy going out into the world and making connections. The thing is, any given project will require each of these traits at some point but most of us just aren't good at all of them. Beck gives practical ways to get things done in spite of what may be holding you back.

Clearing Brain Fog - Quick Fixes

Here are more ways to fight fatigue while you're working. These are specifically physical:

• Give your brain a shot of oxygen with deep breathing. You can learn a number of breathing exercises in a yoga class or on a DVD. One I've found to be effective: inhale deeply enough to fill up your lungs, hold for a count of 10 and exhale.
• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, bend forward from the waist, and let your upper body dangle. This circulates more blood to your brain.
• If you can get away for a few minutes, take a fast walk around the block or parking lot. Sometimes merely getting outside will snap you back to consciousness.
• Aromatherapy works for me every time. If you work in a scent-free environment and can't wear anything scented, take a small bottle of peppermint, lemon or rosemary essential oil (most stores with organic sections sell the Acacia brand, including Fred Meyer), uncap and sniff. Two years ago I bought an aromatherapy inhaler (it looks like a Vick's inhaler) at New Seasons - the blend contains eucalyptus & mint, and still has a strong aroma even after years of regular use.
  
• If you drank your last cup of coffee more than four hours ago, a small one now might work. If you've been guzzling it all day, it won't. Try mint tea instead.

If you've been on your feet all day and it isn't only your brain that's tired, try these:

• If you work in a building with a decent-sized staff room, you can bring a yoga mat (even an old blanket will work), spread it out on the floor and do sitting/laying yoga poses. These three are especially helpful for cranky lower backs: knee stirs (lie on your back, hug both knees to your chest and "stir" them in small circles), the Bridge (lie on your back, bend knees to a right angle with feet on the floor, and raise your hips), and the Star (lie on your back, cross your right leg over to your left side and let it rest there. Then cross your left leg over to your right side).
• If your staff room won't allow getting on the floor, find two chairs. Sit on one, put both feet on the other so that your legs are completely straightened, and hang forward from the waist. Another lower-back easer: sit cross-legged on the chair and bend forward, feeling the stretch.
  
• If you can lie on the floor, try tennis ball acupressure. Place a ball under the part of your back that feels tight, and lower yourself on top of it.
  
• And to get through the rest of your shift, use a peel & stick heating pad, available at most stores like Walgreens.

If you work in a physically active job where you're "on the floor" most of the day, I recommend that you start incorporating yoga into your daily routine, whether you already work out or not. After as little as a month, I bet you'll notice a difference in how you feel at the end of the day.

Combatting OTJ Boredom

One problem I hear about from day job/after-hours arts people involves chronic boredom. Some of these people are bored because they've been doing the same work for 10 years or are in the wrong occupation for them.

Others are bored because the work itself is comprised mainly of repetitive tasks that, after a time, lull the worker into a state that makes it hard to focus. I've been there. As a student I once worked for a phone directory company. My job was to proofread entries, comparing two lists to make sure that every single name, address and phone number matched. After a summer of doing this, I felt like my brain was in danger of shrinking to the size of a pea and falling out of my head.

In the 20-plus years since then, I've discovered that all jobs, even the ones I love (including the current one) have rote or monotonous moments. I've experimented on the job, read books by others who do the same and polled friends to come up with a list of ways to deal with this:

• Even if your current job is, for you, just a stepping-stone, it still helps to have goals. Come up with one goal that will make your employer happy ("find a new repeat customer each week" or "increase my keyboarding speed to 70 wpm") and one that will make you happy ("meet someone who could help me publicize my business" or "find a coworker who's also a writer/artist/musician/whatever).
• Decide that work is only one part of the career called Life, and find ways to help your job serve your purpose or passion. Depending on what your job entails, this may be fairly easy or a real stretch. Challenge yourself to find one thing during each workday that will help you move forward in whatever you consider your life's work. It can include locating a resource you can use, finding a sympathetic coworker who'd love to have lunch and talk about goals, or getting a marketing idea from a conversation you overhear while working the floor. The most important thing you can do is to make the decision; everything else follows from that.
  
• Play mind games that help you focus when you're doing something repetitive. At one job I pretended that the job itself was a test - I wouldn't be able to find my dream job until I could perform my current job with complete mindfulness all day long. You can only take this idea so far but it works for awhile.
• Commit to finding a really good friend or creative partner at work. This will make you extend yourself - greet people you'd normally overlook, strike up conversations with strangers and test the waters to see who might be receptive to your ideas.
• As one author advises, "be excellent" to everyone - colleagues, supervisors, customers - as much as humanly possible. I know that if you have a lot of public contact, you're sometimes on the receiving end of jerkish behavior. Focus on the good people. You never know who might lead you to your next valuable contact.
• Keep an ongoing log of accomplishments, projects and new skills you've learned. This will not only help you realize how valuable you are in your current workplace, it will also make it easier to write a resume and verbal pitch to prospective employers if you're job-hunting or in danger of being laid off.
  
• For extra credit, figure out how each of these skills can help you further your off-hours work. If you're a sales associate, you can use your sales skills to pitch a book idea to an agent. If you're an administrative assistant, your organizing abilities will come in handy when your garage band is ready to get bookings.
  

Your time on the job doesn't have to be a matter of just killing time - your job can feed your art and vice versa. If you're interested in exploring this theme further, I've put together a list of my favorite books on Amazon's Listmania. Most of them are in the FVRL collection and those that aren't are available in used paperback form for as little as a penny on Amazon.

"Bad" Work is Better Than None at All

"A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel." John Steinbeck

"A good performance is one where only we (the performers) know where we messed up." Daniel Gauthier, Artistic Director, Cirque du Soliel

When I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I'd try to make the first draft perfect. Now after many years, I consider it a good day when I do any work on my current project. Any progress is good.

If you're down on yourself for not producing as much as you think you should, try this: for a month, keep a log of the amount of time you spend on a project and what you do with it. You might find out that you're accomplishing more than you'd thought. And if you make mistakes, learn from them and move on. Surprisingly, sometimes "mistakes" or mess ups turn out to be better than the original plan.

Making Dreams Real: No Ideal Times

Someone once said, "There's never a perfect time to go to the dentist, buy a house or have kids." The same goes for working towards any dream but it might be especially true if the dream involves an art form. Most people understand if you eventually want to own your own home or have a child. As for the dentist...sometimes it's not negotiable. But a large portion of our "realistic" society still sees art as frivolous, dispensable and maybe even self-indulgent.

That's why some of us find ourselves justifying such dreams in terms of cost-benefit (especially when challenged by someone else), neglecting them when Urgent Business calls or simply telling ourselves, "I'll write that screenplay/start my website/launch my portrait business when things settle down."

The problem is that things won't settle down, at least not permanently. To quote Oprah, "This I know for sure." Life is like a 2-month old kitten - it never stays still for long. Sure, you'll get the car paid off but someday it'll die and you'll need another. Kids grow up and leave home but as many of my Boomer friends are experiencing, aging parents or grandparents needing care may take the kids' place immediately.

If you've been dying to do something creative but have been postponing it because of life "stuff," stop waiting. Conditions will never be just right; you have to create the right conditions yourself. You do this not by first taking care of everything else for once & for all but by making time today. It need only be five minutes at first. In the beginning what counts is that you're doing it at all. The energy builds from there.

Scottish climber W. H. Murray's famous quote ("when you move, providence moves too") reminds us that once we start on a dream, it's as if we're making an announcement to the universe, and often we'll be rewarded with unexpected help. But we have to make the first move.

Making Dreams Real: Other Confidence Boosters

Yesterday I wrote about using a portfolio or creative resume as a way to boost your confidence even if you don't plan to market what you produce or don't feel any urge to earn money by practicing your passion. Today's post summarizes other ways to remind yourself of your own creative abilities and worth:

• Have a brag session with a few friends who also devote themselves to a cause, art form or project during their off hours. Let each participant have 15 minutes during which he can "show and tell" the accomplishments of which he's especially proud. Bring examples for the "show" part. No critiquing here - this is just for appreciation.
  
• Estimate in dollar amounts how much you've saved for an organization, contributed to an effort or made for someone else. This works especially well in circumstances where your volunteer time has enabled something to happen - a fundraiser, a benefit concert, whatever - that would have cost a fortune if hired professionals needed to be called in. The point isn't to focus on the material benefits of your contributions but to remind yourself of the value of your work, paid or not.
• List concrete accomplishments that your work produced, even if it's just something like "my story helped my best friend feel better when she was depressed." Often we can't see all the results of what we do, but whenever you can, take note.
• Finally, record stories of the compliments and praise you've received. It's nice to think that we could all steam ahead without any rewards or affirmation whatsoever but the truth is, when someone else likes our work and tells us so, we feel especially good. Affirmations from others shouldn't turn us into approval junkies but I believe that everyone needs them at some point. If you want, keep a "guest book" or comment page, on line or on paper, that people can sign.

As we give and receive validation of our gifts and skills, we become bolder about offering those gifts to the world.

Build Confidence by Building a Creativity Portfolio

Why bother creating a portfolio or resume of artistic work if you're not planning on marketing or showing it? One good reason is because seeing all your favorite accomplishments together can build your confidence in your abilities - when you see all that work, you realize just how much you've done and what you're capable of.

Portfolios can take several forms. If you're a writer or artist, you probably already keep hard copies of published and unpublished work. Having a digital portfolio as well is crucial if you send out samples regularly but even if you don't, they're fun to assemble. See this article for basic information on starting one.

Audio and video clips (for those in music and theater) are relatively inexpensive and easy to make. Some performers use their YouTube channel as a portfolio.

You can also create a verbal or visual resume of activity in any field even if just to remind yourself how much experience you've actually had. I have one for music experience even though I've never earned a living as a musician.

Someday you might unexpectedly need to send samples of your work. Or you might be in a funk ("Whatever made me think I could paint/write poetry/design sets? I give up!") and need to be persuaded that you haven't wasted all your free time on nothing. When you're down on yourself, you're more likely to make emotionally-laden assumptions and judgments. That's when you need a concrete reminder of the facts.

Downstream: Going with the Current

(Thanks to my friend & artist Chris Eagon for telling me about the whole concept of "downstreaming," and to whoever originated or articulated this idea in the first place.)

A friend introduced me to the to notion of getting into the current and flowing with when she hitched a ride with me to view the sand mandala at the Cascade Park library around Winter Solstice time. She said that she'd decided to simply state a particular wish (some people call this "putting it out there") and see what came up once she'd set her intention. No aggressive search campaigns of the type I always plan, just noticing what happened once she alerted herself to possibilities.

I admit to always having been skeptical about the ability to set things in motion without a lot of heaving and pushing. Maybe it's my Calvinist upbringing, with its "God helps those who help themselves" orientation. However, I've decided to try it out by adopting a more flowing stance towards one effort that has persistently eluded results.

I've been singing in groups since elementary choir in childhood, but a few years ago it occurred to me that it might be fun to get a small group together to sing the sort of material I load onto my MP3 for "car karaoke" - traditional and popular songs such as the pieces by the Linda Ronstadt/Dolly Parton/Emmylou Harris trio. Or maybe a Manhattan Transfer-style quartet with both men and women. I knew that there are zillions of people out there who sing reasonably well and would like to do more than simply belt out Broadway tunes in the shower but don't want to join a big chorus.

One and a half years later, I've tried out two mixed groups I met on Craigslist, neither of whom panned out because members had to move in order to keep jobs. I've posted my own ad but none of the interested women had an evening off at the same time. So I've decided that this will be my Downstream project: if it's meant to happen, I'll meet the right people and if not, something else will turn up.

For me it isn't easy to think this way. I'm too used to making things happen. Maybe you are too. American culture values a proactive attitude. But when you're pushing, straining and proacting the project to death, it might be time to loosen your grip, say "okay, this is what I want but I'm open to something I haven't considered yet" and see what occurs. That something might be better than whatever you've imagined.

Having a Drek Day at Work? Read This.

Probably at some point everyone gets splattered by random splashes of ill will, bursts of bad behavior or drive-by verbal shootings. If you work in a service occupation, a wide umbrella that encompasses waitstaff and sales associates as well as teachers and other certified professionals, you're more likely to be a target of convenience than if you have minimal public contact. When I've been on the receiving end of an adult tantrum, most often it's simply because I happened to be behind the cash register or counter.

It can be discouraging when you're trying to provide good service but a customer chews you out because he's frustrated by a rule you had no hand in making, or because she's having a bad day. For example, most retail workers can't simply say, "Hey, I didn't write the refund policy - take it to the district office!"

And frankly, some customers (very few, fortunately) are one-uppers with any service provider they meet. There's an old-school job hierarchy in our culture that puts service workers on the bottom of the heap even though many such jobs require high-level "people" skills. At one of my former jobs there was a frequent customer I privately named The Queen because she had a condescending manner towards everyone, even the manager. Some people think that putting others down raises their own stock.

In situations where you have to suck it up and respond politely to someone who's behaving like a jerk, it helps to have some tools handy. I polled a few friends and came up with these ideas.

If you've been showered by drek:

• Remind yourself "It's not about me." This might not help much at first but it has a cumulative effect.
  
• Ask your supervisor for a 5-minute time out. Blow off steam.
• Channel Spock (this is my favorite) - put on a bemused expression and say to yourself, "That wasn't logical."
• Perform a sort of mental cleansing ritual - visualize yourself being showered with a gentle spray of clean water that washes away the energetic mud clinging to you or lingering around in the workplace.

To protect yourself from the effects of emotional mudslinging (prevention):

• Adopt a regular philosophical or spiritual practice consistent with your personal beliefs. If nothing else, try practicing breath-awareness meditation: simply spend some time each day sitting in a comfortable position and focusing on your breath. When random thoughts intrude, acknowledge them and get back to focusing on your breath. I've found that when done regularly this helps develop the ability to detach from the emotional heat of the moment and step into "observer consciousness."
• Keep an ongoing current list of your strengths and best skills. Knowing how good you are at what you do can be a surprisingly effective form of insulation.
• "Be excellent" (see book list, below) to everyone you work with. If you have plenty of allies (or at least no enemies) at work, you'll be supported during bad times.
  
• Always always always have a life and friends outside of work. But then, you already knew that or you wouldn't be reading a blog about work and art...
  

Here's a list of my favorite titles that deal with day job/art life topics
Amazon List: Working With What You Have

Jump-Start Resources

If I'm at a dead end or want to soak up inspiration, these are the resources I pick up first.

A Day for Red Dresses

I remember reading a book whose author referred to something she called the Red Dress project or goal. I can't remember either the title or author (my apologies to whoever you are!) but the term stuck with me. A Red Dress is the project you're so excited about that you wake up & go to bed thinking about it, you have to keep a notepad next to your bed because you're generating so many ideas around it, and you lose all sense of time while you're working on it.

I suppose that the opposite of a Red Dress would be a Gray Suit - something you're doing because there's a lot of demand for it or because Writers Market says it's a hot topic to cover (but it doesn't float your boat) or because everyone else thinks you're good at it and should therefore do it for the rest of your life.

I've worked on my share of Gray Suits, and some of them have paid off. But an entire wardrobe of them leaves me feeling uninspired. And what's the point of "having a life" if the life doesn't feel much different than work sometimes does?

After learning about the Red Dress idea, I decided to always have a Red Dress to work on. I've found that having just one project I'm really jazzed about gives me the energy to tackle the Gray Suit jobs as well. One red piece makes a closet full of gray look just a little better.

Today, celebrate Valentine's Day by giving yourself permission to choose a Red Dress if you don't already have one, or to work on yours if you do.

Making Dreams Real: Trusting Your Own Process

Twenty years ago when I lived in another part of the country, I had a friend who taught English to refugees but whose real passion was acting. She'd lived in New York, played roles in off-Broadway theaters and had even toured Europe & the Soviet Union in a production of The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West. When I met her, her acting career had stalled and despite a decent job, she always felt restless. Her other friends and I urged her to audition for parts in community theater just to get on track again.

Instead, she did what many people with university degrees do during an economic downturn: she cycled back into grad school. For someone else, getting a PhD in theater might have been a smart move but my friend didn't enjoy teaching theater nearly as much as she loved doing theater. She amassed more debt than she could handle, couldn't get enough teaching hours to support herself (we lived in college town where it seemed like half the population had MFAs...sort of like PDX, in fact) and still wasn't doing what she loved most.

During hard times it's still tempting to believe that going "back to school" is the solution to both long-term unemployment and creative doldrums. And sometimes, certain types of group learning under the guidance of an experienced teacher can jump start a stuck career, whether it's a day job or after-hours passion. A weekend intensive or workshop can generate enough ideas to last a year, not to mention mutual support and companionship in the creative process.

Be very careful, however, of mistaking credentials for competence, especially in what's often called "creative" fields (I believe all work done well is creative; I'm just using the term here because it's familiar). Of the five women in my writers' group, I'm the only one who has a four-year degree, and I'm not the best writer among us. That honor goes to a member who left community college after her first semester and currently works in retail management.

In fact, a good percentage of my smartest, most articulate friends are not college graduates. After three decades of being in the workplace full-time & being involved in numerous community music and writing projects, I've seen that going to university is like taking vitamins. It's great for those who already have a good foundation - in the case of college, a good foundation includes common sense, critical thinking skills and a strong sense of purpose; with vitamins, the foundation is a good diet. But without the foundation, getting a degree is almost as useless as gulping 20 supplements a day while subsisting on twinkies and Mountain Dew.

We often distrust our own instincts, including gut feelings about what's right for us, where our greatest talents lie and what we can give the world. I believe that this distrust comes from living in a culture where the smallest decision is often relegated to "experts." Students are expected to specialize in something rather than being good generalists who can handle many types of situations and tasks. I suspect most of us are Renaissance people at heart; excessive specialization does all of us a disservice.

If you're stalled, some good group energy might be just what you need. But don't believe for a moment that you need outside certification to validate your own creativity. Find support but continue to trust your own process.