Reverb10: Beyond Avoidance

What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing?

I really, really wanted to take the online course, Constructing a Conceptual Framework for Social Action.  I’ve been so busy and overwhelmed with my current studies, and simply haven’t had the time.  There’s also the part of me that worries about taking a graduate-level course.  The part of me that thinks of myself as a college dropout, rather than a gifted  nontraditional student who learns best through the exact method of study, action, and reflection that this course employs.  I feel like this could really give me an academic framework for the intensive learning I undergo through my service in the community.

They’re accepting applications right now for the course starting in January.  I won’t be applying.

I graduate in May and take my licensing exams in June, though.

Then there’s no stopping me.

On Reverb10, halfway through

Dear Reverb10,

Your prompts are getting very repetitive.  I can only write about the same aspects of my life so many times.  This is what I did this year:

• I got married.
• I changed what I ate.
• I did well at school.
• I started blogging.
• I walked around a lot.
• I kept working.
• I did a lot of community building.
• I played a lot of board games.
• I explored Cincinnati.
• I traveled to a couple of places.

If you have something unique to ask me about any of these things, please do.  But it’s getting to be pretty dull when you keep asking me, “What was lovely?  What was stupendous?  What did you do?  What did you do that was lovely and stupendous and good?  What was memorable?  What do you mean the stuff that you remember is also the stuff that happened and the stuff that you did?”

I’m going to keep reflecting, but I think I’ll do so in a way that I’m not bending over backwards to make a boring prompt fresh.  I’m still open to surprises, though.

Sincerely,

k

Reverb10: Lesson Learned

What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I learned that there is time. 

There is time in my life to work full-time, go to school at night, be involved in the community, write every day, study enough to maintain a 97% average, and still get a little bit of exercise in.  There are certainly days that I cried from the overwhelm of attempting it, and I don’t always like the relative proportions in the slices of my lifepie, but I CAN make it happen.  If I want to.  (And I do.)

The first steps were the trickiest.  I’m a planner.  I like plans.  I like planning even more than I like doing, which is where I run into trouble.  This year I’ve learned that I can actually DO the things I think about.  If I want to.  (And I do.)

I also get frustrated easily.  I hate not seeing any progress.  I get completely ground down by embarrassment, awkwardness, and having my plans dissolve into uselessness.  I get stressed out from having to invest energy in relationships with people I don’t know very well.  I fall into funks and technical difficulties and throw tantrums at myself.  But I can keep going through difficulties.  If I want to.  (And I do.)

This year, I learned how to want.  To want and then throw myself at my goal so headlong that I couldn’t pull back to save myself if I tried. 

Next year, I’ll keep refining what it is I want.  How much of this do I want?  What am I willing to sacrifice to get it?  What am I unwilling to sacrifice, and what does this mean for what I really want? 

Then I’ll figure out my next steps, and decide when to do them.  Because I can certainly make the time.  If I want it.

(And I do.)

Reverb10: 5 Minutes

5 Minutes Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

Totally stream-of-consciousness, but I was faithful to the time limit:

You married Jef. You live together in your apartment in Oakley. You’re acing massage therapy school. You eat vegan food, and you love it. Jef is a better cook than you. You post on your MT blog on Tuesdays, Fridays, and some Sundays. Don’t forget! Your junior youth group is growing. Farah and Sunnie are heroes. There are amazing paths to take in Ault Park, back behind all the big formal gardens. You and Jef love them in all weather. You love to study at Rohs Street Café when you get the chance. You went to the Cunningham family reunion and everyone was so sweet to you. The children love to garden. You are hopeful and happy. You study at least half an hour every single day, without fail. You watched Harold and Maude and listened to podasts of The Moth. You climbed so many trees!  You went contra dancing and always saved waltzes for Jef. You walked over the purple people bridge and back and along the serpentine wall and everything was alive and beautiful.

Reverb10: Action

When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?

Well, here comes realism again for my weekly kick in the pants.  I’m still in the process of sorting out my aspirations, which doesn’t make this any easier.  I DO have a few that are settled, though.  Here are some plans for the first half of 2011:

Goal #1: Graduate.  Ridiculously well.  Actually, my dream is to be the top Anatomy and Physiology scorer in the entire state of Ohio in June.  Difficult?  Absolutely.  Possible?  You bet.  The top score this past year was 97%.

Next Step: continue reviewing the muscles (most difficult for me to remember) while going through school, keep studying every day, and review material using multiple parts of the brain (reading, writing, organizing, reciting, listening, drawing, palpating, teaching, singing). 

Next mini-step: organize my notecards again by compartment

Goal #2: Train at least ten more animators of junior youth groups and accompany them into service. 

Next step: Seek out potential animators (ideally students and young adults) in the Cincinnati area and present the junior youth spiritual empowerment program to them, and start a study circle to begin training while they assist with currently active junior youth groups. 

Next mini-step: Invite classmates and co-workers to come share their skills with the Walnut Hills junior youth group.  Present the program during break.  Ask our Cluster Institute Coordinator for names of others who have expressed interest.

Goal #3: Get to know my neighbors on a more meaningful level.

Next step: Begin holding regular gatherings in my home to strengthen the character of the community.

Next mini-step: Set a schedule for the gatherings in consultation with my husband and visit my neighbors to invite them.  Maybe invite a friend to go visiting with me. 

 

Reverb10: Body Integration

This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

I wish I could contra dance every day.  Or at least a couple of times a week.  Unfortunately, the regular dances here in Cincinnati are on Monday nights, when I have Anatomy and Physiology class.  This leaves me going on Saturdays once a month (when I’m not out of town) and on those rare Mondays I have a holiday from school.

I love the way the physical and the mental are all caught up with each other in contra dancing.  There are so many complex patterns involving so many people, the math could make you dizzy if the twirling didn’t.  But the memory, the math, the anticipation and planning, they’re all rooted in the body.  And while you’re weaving complicated figure-eights around three other people at once (hey!) you’re also socializing, laughing, flirting, and letting your personality shine through.  Some dances are elegant, and some are goofy, and nearly all of them will leave you breathless.

It’s my body working in unity with a community of bodies, creating something big and beautiful.  It’s the dancer’s choir.  It gives my mind just the right amount of challenge to keep it from worrying, “Do my clothes look funny?  Why aren’t I as talented as her?  Do I have enough in my checking account to pay tuition next week?” giving my body the chance it needs to take over and do what it does best.

(Just a video for those who’ve never tried contra. It’s not a group of mine, although they’re very good!)

Reverb10: 11 Things

11 Things What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

1. Procrastination.  I’ve come to realize that my procrastination problem is mostly one of inertia.  If I can get myself going for even five minutes, I can usually continue on through a huge chunk of the task at hand.  So I plan to get rid of procrastination by getting myself to agree to 5 minutes of work, starting immediately.  Any other activities screeching for my attention can wait for five minutes, after which we’ll see which of them still demand to be heard.

2. Reverse procrastination. I don’t know what else to call this, but it’s my fear of finishing things.  As soon as I get close to the end of  a task, I develop a host of voices explaining why I really, really don’t need to finish it right now.  Or maybe ever.  I don’t like the idea of things being finished, because works-in-progress are unjudgable.  In order to eliminate reverse procrastination, I’m going to have to eliminate …

3. Perfectionism. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote a fantastic book report on Dragon Sword and Wind Child, by Noriko Ogiwara.  But I couldn’t get the illustration on the cover exactly the way I liked it, so I never turned it in.  I got a D in Reading that quarter.  This habit has remained, essentially unchanged.  In 2011, I hope to eliminate perfectionism in my life by being mindful of the types of judgment I make: is my criticism reasonable?  Would I feel okay passing this sort of judgment on someone else’s work?  Does the judgment teach me and help me make improvements, or is it just designed to make me feel like crap?  If I can keep track of when I’m being a jerk to myself, I can begin to focus my brain on more productive channels for improvement.

4. Backbiting. It’s never okay, and yet nearly everybody indulges in it.  Over the last few years, I’ve vastly reduced the degree to which I backbite, but now I need to focus on A.) avoiding backbiting even when feeling hurt and distressed, and B.) stop listening passively while others backbite.  This probably means developing some good conversation redirection skills, and almost certainly requires staying OUT of the break room at work during lunch.

5. Knicknacks. Okay, we got a lot of lovely wedding presents in 2010.  Some of them are incredibly useful.  Others would be put to better use making somebody else very happy.  I don’t think anybody in our lives would object to our keeping the cycle of free giving going.  So any physical stuff that isn’t our favorite physical stuff should continue its journey elsewhere.

6. Library overdue notices. I can renew my personal reading online.  I don’t get charged for the overdue books I use in my classroom, because I use my educator’s card for them.  There’s no reason for me to be racking up library fees.  I will be keeping track of due dates in my actual, physical datebook, as well as only checking out books when I know that I can start reading them immediately.

7.  High Fructose Corn Syrup. We took the leap and went vegan.  I don’t eat much junk food, but I do eat some.  Ditching any product with HFCS seems like a good first step on cutting back on the sugar in 2011.  Obviously, this means reading labels and sticking to my guns.  Yes, even when it’s free. Free junk has been my main source of junk.  It’s time to quit that nonsense.

8. The pile of laundry in the bedroom. It’s time to get rid of a whole lot of clothes.  Even clothes I love, like the Batman t-shirt that doesn’t fit me very well because it’s a boys’ size large.  Or the stripey sweater that looks great on me, but can’t be layered with a regular shirt because of the shape of the neck.  I’m going to take a Sunday and purge the crap out of the dresser and closet.  I haven’t done this on a large scale since I last moved.  I honestly love this process and can’t wait to begin.

9. Excuses. In 2011, I’d like to learn to take my criticisms without squirming and desperately scrambling for an explanation.  I think I’m a big girl, and if I focus on the irrationality of my instinct (RUN!  YOU’RE GONNA DIE!), I can develop a more grounded and useful response that’s not rooted in fear.

10. Sunday Funks. I tend to cry on Sundays.  Six days of the week, I have a ton of stuff to get done.  I work all day, go to school at night, and volunteer a couple of times a week.  On Sundays, I write and rest, and I HATE IT.  Recently, we cleaned our whole kitchen on a Sunday, top to bottom.  No emotional outbursts.  So Sunday in 2011 is going to be my official “intense physical activity” day, whether that means hiking or dancing or scrubbing the bathtub.

11. Ripped-up fingers. I’ve GOT to quit chewing on my fingers.  Now.  Before I graduate.  Ideally before my student outreach starts, only a few days after New Year.  It’s gross, and it’s unhygienic, and a danger to myself and others.  Finding nondestructive fidgets will be a big part of this.  Retractable pens, jar lids with the pop-up safety buttons, and any thingies that can be turned inside-out and flipped back again with one hand are all helpful to me.  Learning to actually be STILL could be another.  Band-aids work for a bit before they come off (I wash my hands a hundred times a day at work), but ordinary Scotch tape also works, and is cheaper.  I never fidget when I’m giving massages, thank goodness, so that’s not so bad.

All in all, I’m pretty excited to ditch some non-essentials and actively-harmfuls next year.  What will you dump in 2011?

Reverb10: Beautifully Different

Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

This prompt kind of gives me the heeby-jeebies.  Why is it that beauty has to be unique?  The things I find most beautiful in myself–patience, creativity, passion, empathy, vision–these are qualities that I admire in others as well.  Sure, I manifest them differently, but the essential qualities are the same. 

When I lived in Malawi 2007/2008, I realized that a lot of the things I thought were a part of my core identity were actually just trappings I put on myself to feel more special.  But in another country, these things just didn’t work the same way.  My sense of humor was a flop.  My interests were not shared by anyone else.  My sense of aesthetic was snobbish and weird.  Even my core virtues were put to the test, causing me to realize how far I still needed to grow!  So the idea that my quirks are my beauty doesn’t fly with me. 

But while I don’t think they are the basis for beauty, they can be beautiful.  I love coming from two wonderful, quirky families: Canadian Jewish intellectual performance junkies on the one hand, who pun furiously and sing Gilbert and Sullivan at the drop of a hat, and small town, basketball-loving, meat-and-potatoes Hoosiers on the other, whose three religions are Christianity, common sense, and the Democratic party.

I love that out of this came me: punny with an oversized vocabulary, but more relaxed among people who value “good” over “smart.”  The wanderlust, the propensity towards service, the need I feel for poetry and dance and trees in my life, these are all patterns I have woven (mostly unconsciously) with these familial materials.  If I am beautiful, it’s because of this: that I now choose to create beauty with what I have been given.  It’s the beauty, not the uniqueness, on which I need to focus.  “Unique” comes from staying true to the beauty I most believe.

Reverb10: Community

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

You won’t find much of anything about the Walnut Hills neighborhood on the internet.  Wikipedia only says that it’s “a large diverse area on the near East side of Cincinnati,” then goes on to mention what it’s close to, as though mentioning that it’s 10 minutes from downtown or borders Eden Park tells you anything about the neighborhood itself.  A website about “Cincinnati neighborhoods” doesn’t even include Walnut Hills at all, although there are plenty of photos of East Walnut Hills, which has giant old houses and fancy places to shop.

What started as a haphazard class for five kids ranging in age from 4 to 14 in the basement of Walnut Hills public library exploded into an amazing experiment in community building in 2010.

First, we trained a few more teachers.  Then we reached out.  We went to the park, the library, the front porches of our neighbors.  Lots of kids came!  Then all of them left again.  But one stayed.  One 5th grade girl turned out to be the linchpin we were looking for.

She brought in her younger brothers and sisters.  Many visits later, her mother became involved.  Through the mother, neighbors and their children are getting involved.  This little community effort has blossomed into a class for children (soon to be one for big kids and another for little kids), a junior youth group for preteens and young teenagers, and two study circles for adults.

Our is goal is to continue building relationships between friends and neighbors, and to raise up people with the skills and desire to continue to expand the process from within the neighborhood.  The junior youth are already learning how to make a difference in their community through meaningful acts of service.  The older ones will soon be in a position to help start new groups and projects on their own.  The grown-ups are excited to become teachers, tutors, visitors, and hosts.  Our numbers are small, but so is our neighborhood.  And the more we learn, the more we can help other communities take the same steps towards unity.

At the beginning of 2010, I had many misgivings.  My efforts during 2009 had been easily surpassed by my frustrations and disappointments.  But some things only come with time and perseverance, as annoying as that is.  I’ve grown into a wonderful relationship with people of all ages and backgrounds, with the common goal of throwing off our passivity to create community instead of waiting for one to develop around us by chance.

In 2011, I hope to further deepen these relationships and welcome more children, youth, and adults  to experience a different sort of neighborhood.  I hope to empower others to take on increasing responsibility for the state of their own communities.  I hope to inspire still more to examine their surroundings and take the first steps towards building community wherever they are.

In 2011, I want to love the people around me more, know them better, and show it more meaningfully.  I want to work with each one of them to build the gift of a better world.

A little earthshaking doesn’t seem too far-fetched for a New Year’s resolution, does it?  After all, we’re already well on our way …

Reverb10: Make

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

This answer won’t surprise anyone: the last thing I made was dinner!  Actually, I only made the salad, while Jef dealt with the cooked stuff.  I used fresh spinach, a carrot, and half a red pepper.  Also, extra virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar, tahini, garlic powder, and black pepper.  I used a medium-sized mixing bowl, a knife, and a bottle with a lid.  That’s it!  The whole process couldn’t have taken more than seven minutes.  I like to keep things simple and delicious. 

Some things I want to make next year include:

• a vermicomposting bin
• a heatable rice bag for my feet at night
• vegan pierogi
• a plan for what to do after I graduate

My mother would probably prefer that I added “babies” to the list, but I don’t think we’re there quite yet!