Friday, April 26, 2013

Theodore Roosevelt Said That

A couple weeks ago I shared this fabulous quote that my friend Elizabeth had posted online.  Though she is brilliant and beautiful and charming, the person who famously said, "Comparison is the thief of joy," was Theodore Roosevelt.  Just wanted to give credit where credit is due.

That got me thinking about some other great quotes I've heard lately from people in my life. Before I get into this, let me say that I spent the weekend in Virginia, celebrating my Grandpa's 85th birthday. He is my only grandparent left, and I love him! My parents were there, and my sweet sister, and our cousins, aunts and uncles, his rakish friend Peter, and our favorite family friend, Lisa Mirabelli. (Some folks are SO fantastic and powerful that the first and last name must always be used.) Lisa, if you read this, we adore you, and wish we could cook you shrimp and grits and cake for dessert every night!

A note about my Grandpa- he loves handmade pottery, and Bill O'Reilly, and wildflowers, and had his first poem published a couple years ago in his college's alumni journal.  He loves driving but dislikes flying, and is a retired geologist. For the last handful of decades years he has gone swimming 3 days a week, and he is in damn good shape. And he loved my Grandma Alice, whom we called Nanny, for 55 years. We all love and miss her still.

Also, I got to see my sister's magical, imperfect life, complete with pocket pals, farm kitties, cool housemates and crazy thrift stores. And there was her budding new community, Whisper Hill Farm where she's found her people, and the little Charlottesville Farmer's Market, where she slings coffee and kale.  I tried to set her up on a date with a cute guy who worked in the liquor store with toothless Judy, where I went to buy bourbon for whiskey pie.  If you are a cute young farmhand in the Shenandoah Valley, I have a sister for you!



But I digress.

Actually, I would like to digress again.  The humor in me writing a post all about anxiety while on a family trip hit me like a load of Xanax once I got back to Austin. This is how it works- you love these people, and you let all your shit hang out, and then you write in your blog about it.  To the Noble's and Newman's- there aren't a lot of us, but we are high quality characters, I'll give us that.

So, on to the quotes.

There is an old saying of our Grandpa's, "If you're nervous, go to bed!" Seriously good advice.

Also, when as a small child we would yell at our parents, "I HATE YOU!" they would calmly say, "Well, that's your prerogative." That's what happens when you're raised by a social worker and a sensitive Jew.

Steven gave me bluebonnet seeds for valentine's day last year, and they bloomed again this year! Only one plant came back, but it's bursting with flowers. He looked at it thoughtfully and said, "you know Lindsey, it's not the number of bluebonnets you have, it's the size that counts."

He has also been known to say, "Every time you put ketchup on a hamburger, Texas cries a little."

I promised my sister that my dying words will be to grab a grandchild and yell, "Your great aunt shit in my yard!" (It's a long story.)

My Dad had a raging party with his best friend that's he known for 40 years, whose name is Doug McChesney. Apparently the two person party culminated with him saying to Doug, "Next year- Burning Man, Mark and Doug naked in the desert."

Totally something Theodore Roosevelt might have said.

Just to bring it back around to what we were talking about earlier, the morning I flew out my Grandpa and I were talking about coffee. He brews it extra strong when the Seattle relatives come to town.  He laughed as he was doing it and said to me, "You know sugar, for me coffee was never some big thing. Just warm water that makes you shit.  And that's fine by me."

Amen. Here's to you, Grandpa, and a life well lived.









Friday, April 19, 2013

The Art of Practice

Today I'd like to talk to you about anxiety.  I am pretty sure I have been concerned since the day I was born.  Not to say that I wasn't a delightful, happy, red-haired little lady, but I was worried a lot of the time, too.

 "Ginger Bangs"


I think one of my main goals in life is to not be so worried.  For me, that is more important, and more valuable, then a big time career or a fancy house or a truckload of money.  It will bring me more peace, and more acceptance, than anything else.

At its core, anxiety is the anticipation of something bad happening.  (My dog trainer told me that!) I think it has a lot to do with expectation, with fear of the unknown, with loss, and with imperfection, but I don't know how to put all this into words quite yet.

Something else important about anxiety: you cannot think your way out of it.

Let that sink in- I've been trying to THINK my way out of it for 30 years, and it has never worked.

As my Mom says, anxiety manifests as energy, and it has to go somewhere.  So it sits inside and festers and grows, or you find a way to get it out.

In college I acted in a lot of plays, and sometimes that worked.  In the past I have tried to think about it really hard, and talk about it a lot, but the energy still sits in there and grows.  I like to cry, too, but I've promised Steven I am working on not crying about things I don't need to cry about (like haircuts, ans going to the vet.)

Here's a picture for you- dealing with anxiety is like wandering around the mountains in a giant orange life jacket, even though you're 1,000 miles away from the ocean. Instead of picking wildflowers you're looking for sharks.

This is immensely frustrating to me! How do I take off the life jacket? Where do I put it?

It has been humbling to realize that I may always have to live with the life jacket.  That said, I might take it off every day, or forget I'm wearing it and just smell the mountain air and gather armloads of wild sunflowers.

This is the truth, my friends.  I've realized recently that the real work is not to pretend that anxiety does not exist, but find a way to accept my nature, manage it, and find ways to get that energy out. It's been daunting to realize that I can't just go running once, or eat salad a couple days a week, and feel great.  I gotta run a few times a week, I gotta sleep well and eat well, consistently.  My therapist prescribed MEDS: Meditation, exercise, diet, and sleep.  (The other kind of meds can be a useful tool, too.)

To keep with the mountain metaphors- self care is like a really great tent.  You don't go to Walmart- you buy one at REI with a lifetime warranty.  That said, the tent needs to be taken care of for it to protect you from the elements.  The more you neglect it, the harder it will be to patch it up.  But REI makes great tents, and they'll let you start over if you burn too big a hole in yours.

This is the art of practice.  Of putting in the daily effort to manage the stress and energy of the big demons. It gets easier.  And it helps to have compassion for yourself, a mountain field to walk in, and solid tent.















Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Thief of Joy

Last week I turned 31.  There were thunderstorms, and a trip to San Antonio with Steven, and fish and chips and hamburgers on the River Walk.  There were phone calls from my parents, and a letter from my Grandpa, and a delicious dinner cooked by my good friend, that ended with all of us stuffed to the gills with steak, pesto, and strawberry shortcake.

There was also the usual taking stock of how things have shaped up in the past year, and some reflection on what this next year might hold. I have done a lot of wrestling with the demons this year- a good old fashioned rattlesnake roundup of anxiety and sadness and fear of all the big unknowns.  This is not good or bad, just what it is.  I think this next year there will be far less rattlesnakes, for which I am grateful.

In thinking about my propensity towards worry and stress, I was reminded of a quote I saw on my friend Elizabeth's Facebook page. Also, for you Seattle folk, Elizabeth happens to be one of the smartest, funniest, most talented puppet makers and performers I have met.  What she posted was this:

Comparison is the thief of joy.

That got its own sentence so you could see it really clearly.  The humor in posting that on Facebook is not lost on me, and in fact it might be the perfect place to savor such wise words.  Now, this is familiar territory for me.  Comparison is to the anxious mind what peanut butter is to jelly- they just go so perfectly together.  Add a little perfectionism in there, and you've got a goddamn picnic.  

Let's look at some examples.  Sometimes I look at Facebook when my resolve and resiliency are not feeling too hot, and things like this happen- "Look at that picture of that wedding.  They are happy and beautiful and perfect. My life should be like that."  "Look at that new baby- those parents are happy and perfect and their baby never cries." Or, this is my favorite, "Look at my friends new puppy.  Their puppy is perfect and their lives are perfect, and my dog is shy and nervous and has trouble making friends."  

There is danger is mythologizing other people and experiences from the outside looking in.  The truth is that  by assigning a narrative to a photo we see on the internet, we put ourselves in the perfect position to do some very profound and unhelpful comparisons.  It basically runs us into a brick wall of SHOULDS.  

My dog should be perfect.  My body should look like hers.  My wedding should look like that.  The list goes on and on. 

I miss the old days, when you would meet the baby of a girl you went to high school with because you ran into her at the grocery store, not because you logged on to your "friendship" account online. When you would get news of an announcement from a friend through a letter instead of a online post.  
Now, I don't think everyone is as sensitive or susceptible to the thief of joy as I am, but I also think more people then you realize feel sad and depressed after going on Facebook, though they can't exactly say why.  

Some of the best medicine is to see the story in your head played out in reality.  I had convinced myself that my dog was a fuck up, and I was a fuck up, because I saw a picture of my friend's new puppy and decided he was perfect.  I met this puppy when I went home to Seattle, and found out that he is as cute as the pictures, but definitely not perfect.  He kept them up all night crying, he chewed pants while they were still on legs, he was willful.  My friend and I talked and I found out we had some of the same anxieties, that raising our own dogs was much different then we thought it would be, and a lot harder. 

This is key! Many of the good things in our life turn out much different then we thought they would be, but different does not mean bad. 

So, I don't have a life that fits my narrative of other people's pictures.  But I have thunderstorms in San Antonio, and Guthrie is snoring with his head on my pillow, and the trees are blooming in Texas.  I am going to do my best to enjoy my own magical, imperfect life.  And that is as good a goal as any for the next year.