Notes to Self

Rest in Love

Eating Frogs and Drinking Lemonade

Sometimes we make plans and life intervenes. Sometimes these plans are for two months of travel over the summer - plans that have unfolded in the same manner every summer for 10 years. Completely unraveled. So, here I sit in my house in the same spot I sit every other morning of the year while my husband does the traveling without me. The reason is not insignificant - you do what needs to be done. That doesn’t mean there is no disappointment or sadness or grief. It just means that priorities are best kept in order and in this case it was the right thing to do.

So, here I am, eating frogs and drinking lemonade. Frogs include such things as doctors appointments and difficult work projects. This blog post is a frog. I have been procrastinating on writing and posting - using distractions and mundane tasks not to post, not to write, not to make. An example of lemonade can be found in the picture you see here. Our Hydrangea bush - since we are gone every summer, I have never seen it in its full glory. This year it is loaded and blue. I will have fresh cut Hydrangeas for as long as they last. Pardon me, while I take another sip of fresh lemonade.

Email Deluge

If email is not a problem for you, I would not bother to read on. Go spend your fruitful time elsewhere.

It is annual report/performance review time at my job. I am looking back and completing a rough accounting of all the things I accomplished (or not) last year. Where did all that time and energy go? Out of morbid curiosity, I did some very rough calculations on the amount of time I spent on work related email. I am horrified by the results.

8,500 received

3,200 sent

(These numbers are rounded down by 5% for possible error or duplication and comprise work related email only. This is not a scientific analysis nor pretends to be.)

OK, so we’ll look at an extremely rough calculation on this:

Let’s say I spent an average of 5 minutes writing each of these 3,200 emails. (Obviously, some took seconds and some I slaved over, but 5 minutes is probably a reasonable average.) That equals about 267 hours or 6.75 forty-hour work-weeks of responding to work related emails. (This figure does not include reading the ones received - I work in academia - academics are not known for their brevity.)

The numbers are ugly. I am unable to bring myself to scrutinize this further in order to estimate the real time involved in all aspects of this communication. This is not the way I want to spend my life or my work. This is not the way I want the people I work with to spend their time. It is time for me to step away from the machine(s). My machine driven life is out of control. I am complicit. I am addicted. This is NOT how I want to spend the second half of my life.

So, here’s my resolution for 2012: to live in my body – to detach from the machine (as much as possible within the confines of my career requirements.) It doesn’t help that my livelihood depends on the machine, BUT how much work can I do without it? How much time can I spend without it? How many of these emails actually require a response? How many emails are truly critical for me to send? How can I build borders and boundaries around the reading and response to email?

I’m not looking for “Inbox Zero” or to be more efficient with email communication – I’m striving for less – less reading, less writing, less processing. Just less. Much less. The goal is more flesh presence (I like being in the room with you); more creative work; more book reading; more writing; more time in real life, in the real world, in real dimensions. Yes, I’ve read all the articles on email management and I was GTD long before it was the hip-geek thing to be (I took my first workshop with David Allen when I was 25 – and that was 25 years ago.) No, this about email abstinence, detox and mindfulness. This is not about being more organized. It is about leveling up the mind, body and spirit. This is about no longer participating in the insanity.

In an effort to conserve my time and energy and my colleague’s time and energy, I hereby vow to respond to fewer emails, to send fewer emails and to proselytize to the congregation until every damn one of you is converted. So, when you see me next week and ask me if I received your email, the answer is “yes.” I just didn’t think it was worth my time or yours to respond.

Turn and Return

I just returned from a weekend with one of my best buddies at Kripalu. We didn't sign up for a specific program - just R & R. It was planned back in October as a chance to touch my grief, get up close to it, and maybe find some movement in it. The plan was also to celebrate this friendship that will now have a bit of geographical distance soon. The weekend, from start to finish, was everything and more than I hoped it would be and I return feeling joy and peace. We did yoga classes, dance classes, spa time, and ate some of the best and most wholesome food I've had in a while. From all of this, I now have new tools to be a better person, mother, partner, friend and teacher. My hope is that I can learn to use them well. The highlight of my weekend turned out to be a meditation workshop with Randal Williams. Now to get on with the work at hand - art making, course prep, online course design... in other words... business as usual...