Resolved: Just Keep Moving in 2014

I’ve slid once again, along with everyone else, into another new year. It is one in which I will turn 61 (Gasp! How did this happen?). I will return to Barcelona (and Gaudi!!), explore the northeast quadrant of Arizona, and shuttle happily from city to city around the Baltic Sea during 2014. I will also begin the arduous (and hopefully fulfilling) work on my dissertation.

As I always do at the end of one year – as many others – I take an internal survey. What was positive, what was negative? What did I accomplish that I wanted to and what did I not do? What am I thinking about as I move my life into another calendar? Here’s what it looks like:

Positive:
* No longer have to walk on eggshells every day. Some readers will “get” that.
* Passed the rest of my comprehensive exams
* Spain with my sister
* Grand Canyon with my brother
* Maine with my daughter
* A class of (mostly) terrific students who stayed awake Thursday nights long enough to learn research
* My wonderful – repeat, wonderful – staff who have my back and are my friends

Negative:
* I’ll get back to that

What did I accomplish that I wanted to do?
* Passed into the dissertation phase
* Consumed less sugar
* Practiced my guitar most days
* Eliminated some of my clutter (go Ebay!)
* Entertained friends at my home - I’ve been talking about that for years

What did I not do that I wanted to do?
* Dance
* Write regularly
* Take another surfing lesson (I’ve GOT to get up!)
* Visit certain older friends
* Exercise more -- or just exercise. Forget the 'more' part. Who am I kidding? I can’t figure out how to exercise and not sweat so much. It’s bad for my hair.

What did I learn?
* Facebook friends can be a real source of support during trying times.
* I really do not have to answer the phone. So if you want me, email me. 
* People have the same personalities as adults that they had as children. If they irritated you then, they will probably still irritate you now.
* I am not ‘stuck’. There are ways out of impossible situations.

What do I want to do in 2014?
* Start working on a dissertation. I gave myself off the holiday season so I could enjoy it for once.
* Figure out a way to include dance in my life
* Write more regularly. The barrier I encounter is not wanting to p** off the living.
* Go take that 2nd surfing lesson. I finally have feeling back in my left knee from my first attempt.
* Visit those older friends.
* Tighten the sugar ban. Eat less gluten.
* Sleep more.
* Spend less (read: Stay OFF Amazon)

I was supposed to get back to the negative but I have nothing to say. Sure, there were days that didn’t go well – even weeks. But I have nothing to complain about. Nobody close to me has died or gotten seriously ill or been in any accidents. Nobody has lost a job or suffered financial ruin. Everyone is speaking to one another. There is a lot to which I look forward. Dare I say I am content?

What are you thinking about as you enter 2014?

Shopping.... Sugar..... Sh**!

My daughter and I spent several hours in the car together this weekend. In the early evening, with still a few hours to drive, we got off at an exit for coffee and gas. There was a big shopping mall between those two points. “I’m feeling lately like I want to go shopping,” I admitted to her as I drove past the mall entrance. We marveled that we are in month 8 of our commitment to not shop, and to date neither of us has cheated. And I won’t, despite those recent yearnings, which will be ignored.

We talked about “the end” of this commitment in four months, and what that might be like. I told her that I fully expect to stay on the shopping diet even when the year is over; she agrees. We both like zero balance on our credit cards, and we like not accumulating. Honestly, there is not one thing I need or that I anticipate needing. I got through the fall and winter without a single day of panic over what I should wear – there were always plenty of options for whatever my mood, the occasion, or the weather brought. My recent yearnings to shop are surely due to the sneak peaks I’ve taken into the few spring catalogs that have been in my mailbox of late. However, I also believe that resisting shopping has been made easier because every free moment of time I might have had to shop is consumed with school work. If I were truly free during my non-working hours, it surely would be harder. I really just have no time to wander about in stores, peruse catalogs, or browse the internet. My busyness has been a blessing. But I wonder what will happen when the excuse of school work evaporates.

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The last time I entered the pharmacy at Grand Central Terminal, I ran into an immense rainbow-colored wall of marshmallow Peeps. My heart rate increased, my taste buds went into overdrive, and my willpower …. well, it won but mostly due to the immutable timetable of a commuter train and a very long checkout line. But those bunnies (no chicks for me -  the beheading of a bird even when it’s made of marshmallow is just too Ozzy O for me) will be taunting me for the next six weeks. Once Easter is behind me, the confection torture that started in October with candy corn will lighten until Halloween is upon us again. 

My daughter and I recently attended a three-week lecture series at The Open Center in NY. It was about gluten allergies (which she has) and sugar addiction (which we both have). I was hoping that there would be some magic or  at least ideas that I hadn’t already heard about to try to lessen my cravings and make this easier. I’m sorry to report there are none. The best the speaker could offer was a shrug of his shoulders and the suggestion that we eat some fruit instead or go exercise. I mean really. When I’m frantically scouring the cupboards and the refrigerator in search of something that will satisfy me, somehow the prospect of a banana just doesn’t do it. And the likelihood of my either heading to the gym or dropping to the floor and doing 50 crunches (even if I could make it to 50) in that moment of angst seems pretty remote.

I have been pretty “good” – managing to resist most extra sugar that comes in the form of baked goods, candy and the like. My sister and I made a pact. She won’t buy me any peeps or jelly beans at Easter. I can buy her one box of peeps but not the whole rainbow, which my usual compulsivity would dictate; if I buy her maple-cream filled eggs – her personal weakness, I’ll limit those to two. She rationalizes that the calorie count of the eggs is relatively low plus the chocolate around them is dark. We all know dark chocolate is a “good” thing.   My daughter and I have a similar pact except that it’s exception-less. I must get through this holiday without additional stress on my pancreas.

But despite these agreements, there is still a plethora of sugar in my diet. I need my coffee light and sweet. Two cups a day, occasionally three. My lunchtime yogurt has sugar a.k.a high fructose corn syrup as its second ingredient. I haven’t been able to eschew that in favor of plain (gag, gag) yogurt even if I put in my own fruit. My excuse? I don’t feel like getting out the blender every morning to create it. And then I don’t feel like washing the blender. My dinnertime salad dressing has the same thinly disguised sugar product as my yogurt does. And when I boil some water for a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in the evening instead of some ice cream, I wonder who I think I’m kidding. Marshmallows are sugar no matter their form. And liquid sugar is no better than solid sugar.

Some decision-points are easier than others. It definitely helps to have someone supportive in my presence when there’s a choice to be made. If my daughter is with me, between the two of us, we’ll do the right thing - food-wise and shopping-wise. My secretary no longer brings me pieces of cake or a couple of cookies when she notices food in our suite. But being alone at home is hard, especially during long weekend days or evenings when I’m writing and feel stuck or weary. Restlessness sets in and I start seeking solutions for those feelings in the form of sugar. I’ve thought about that a lot lately. When my mind is occupied and interested, and I am not feeling restless or uneasy, sugar doesn’t compete for my attention. But when I start to feel like I need a break or I’d rather do anything but what I’m doing at the moment, sugar surges to mind as the perfect antidote for my malaise. A snickers bar is sure to make me feel better although in my saner moments, I’m not sure what better is, really. Sated? Soothed? Stimulated? Or just temporarily distracted from something more painful than an unwritten paragraph?

Valentines and Taming Tigers

I’m not really a fan of Valentine’s Day – never have been. Possibly it’s a case of sour grapes because I’ve never really been anybody’s valentine, except maybe once. It’s a holiday that has evolved to focus on “stuff” and equates love with roses or diamonds or candy. I can’t count the number of times in my practice that I sat with clients who were angry over what they considered to be their partner’s inadequate attempts at buying their love on Valentine’s Day, and tried to be non-judgmental and accepting of their feelings. The expectations tied up with this day, frankly, I find obscene.  

The other reason I eschew Valentine’s Day is all the darned sugar. Chocolate and more chocolate. Little hard sugar hearts with Be Mine and other endearments stamped on them. Red and pink M&M’s. Red and pink marshmallow hearts from the people who bring us Peeps at Easter.  Beautifully decorated valentine themed cupcakes at three bakeries I pass twice daily in Grand Central Terminal. This holiday represents another sugar gauntlet.  

  

My first memory of Valentine’s Day is from the first grade when my mom baked her highly addictive sour cream sugar cookies for my class. She frosted them in pink and neatly wrote each child’s name in white frosting on their own cookie. They were beautiful and I was very proud to deliver each one to the proper child when we had our party in the classroom. Back in those days, we exchanged valentines with each other, but the rule was that everybody had to receive a valentine. The teacher would send home a list of every child’s name in the class and whether or not you were friends with everyone, there was no exclusion allowed. I remember very carefully picking out valentines for my classmates from the box my mother bought for me, being sure to save the pretty ballerina card for Christine, who I thought was the prettiest girl in my class. And I secretly hoped that of all the valentines I would receive that day, one of them would be a ballerina. There was always one in every box of store bought valentines.     

Every year it was the same. I crossed my fingers and prayed that I would be the recipient of the ballerina card – or the princess card – or whatever card featured some character who was ultra-feminine and pretty. Somehow in my mind if that card was bestowed on me, it meant that the giver thought that I was ultra-feminine and pretty. I didn’t feel that way inside but looked for any external “evidence” I could get.

My second solid memory of Valentine’s Day was in 8^th grade when I sat at a card table set up in our dining room, listening to the Four Seasons sing Working My Way Back to You on the radio while I made valentines from red and pink construction paper, paper doilies, glitter, and stickers for my four best girl friends. There were no boys in the equation – well, except for Judy and her boy-next-door, but that didn’t quite count. He went to a different school so during our 8 - 3 school day, we could pretend he didn’t exist and Judy just belonged to us.  

In the 9^th grade, we had Mr. Greiner for social studies – global studies I think it was called. Mr. Greiner was a very tall and solid man and he was an avid sports fan. The first week of school, he gave us a current events pop quiz, as he was apt to do, and one of the questions was to name a professional basketball team. My answer? The Harlem Globetrotters. I mean, really, what did I know about basketball (or any sport, for that matter)!!! I’m sure he either laughed himself silly or just pegged me for a loser.

Mr. Greiner’s other chief characteristic was that he was mean. Physically mean.  He had a reputation for banging boys up and down the hallway against lockers. Bad boys, boys who mouthed off, or made him mad in some way.  It would happen and word about who was the latest victim passed through the halls like wild fire. Back then, teachers got away with that kind of behavior.  Even though I wasn’t a boy, and didn’t mouth off, I still feared Mr. Greiner. The sound of his booming voice made my heart do triple-flips and my knees need to sit.

What does this have to do with Valentine’s Day? Well, somehow, I think from our gym teacher who we believed was having a romance with him, my girlfriends and I found out that Mr. Greiner’s birthday was Valentine’s Day. By February, we had learned that one way to get on his good side was to produce obsessively neat and detailed maps of the countries we were studying. He would give the class a list of all the elements of a country that were to be included – rivers, lakes, mountains, anything of geological/geographical import – and order us to produce maps to scale. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the amount of time spent working on the maps in our local library and the magnitude of his grudging approval of our efforts as he handed them back in class.  We decided, my girlfriends and I, that we could further cement his approval (and perhaps a guarantee to never be the victims of the locker-bounce) by acknowledging his birthday. So on February 13 after school, we gathered in my mom’s kitchen and baked a heart-shaped birthday cake, which we frosted and decorated for Mr. Greiner, and took to school the next morning.

It was a successful undertaking. We studied his reaction carefully as we surprised him with the cake. We’d rarely seen Mr. Greiner smile, unless it was sadistically, and certainly had never heard him speak in anything but a booming and intimidating voice. But that day, he glowed a bit red from embarrassment, smiled broadly, and actually bowed to us as he said simply, “Thank you.” 

The tiger was tamed. An aggressor on your side is better than an aggressor on the opposite side.

Cranky & Irritable

I’m cranky and I’m irritable. There are no better words to describe me at this moment…. Those who are around me on a daily basis will concur that it is, in fact, not just this moment, but lately almost every moment. To them I apologize for my poor behavior, or more to the point, my sharp tongue and my impatience. I am truly trying to control myself but I am slip-sliding.

I’m not 100% sure why this is my state. But…..

I’ve been deeply, unshakably sad for months because someone I wanted to be in my life does not want me in theirs. The post-mortems of every last one of our communications have been endless as I’ve struggled to figure out exactly where I went wrong in misreading signals and misunderstanding intentions. Some of the attraction is the residue of a childhood yearning to be loved and valued by a narcissistic parent. There is also an element of identifying with the aggressor. More than once, I have become emotionally involved with someone who really frightens me with their potential for ferocity. If I can get the one who bites on my side, then perhaps I will not be bitten. But toxic once is toxic always.  

Sugar has been a challenge. I wrote a few weeks ago about an intention to cut down, to detox myself from that sweet drug. I admit that it’s been very, very difficult. I have managed to limit my consumption of ice cream to two teaspoons at a time, no more than once a day. I pay attention to it when I eat it. And I put the carton away without too much longing. When the freezer stock of ice cream is gone, I won’t buy any more.

Except for one birthday celebration, I have avoided sugary treats at work. But every day is a battle. I get to Grand Central Terminal in the evening and have a few minutes before my train. My attention strays to the Snickers, Milky Way, Almond Joy, and Peanut M&Ms displayed in Hudson News. I pass at least three bakeries in the terminal. Cannolis, my favorite fruit tarts, cupcakes decorated like art, cheesecake, black and white cookies – they entice me to come closer. I tell myself I don’t really want them, and then I admit I’m lying. I desperately want them. I imagine they will make me feel better, soothe whatever is hurting. I can also imagine some people saying, “Oh go ahead, stop depriving yourself, life is short.” And I understand their point. But they don’t understand mine. If I give into the craving, I take steps backwards. I will just have to start over and I need to keep going, to push through this. I need to get past the point, if it exists, of thinking, believing that I will feel better if I just consume some sugar-laden delicacy. Sugar is a short-term “fix.”

Winter is the anniversary of the deaths of both of my parents. My mom died five years ago in early January; my father seven years ago in mid-February. My mom was thirty years old when I was born. When she was alive, I always considered that thirty-year difference as a kind of insurance policy. Whatever age I was, I still had thirty years before I would be her age. But now she’s gone, the policy is no longer in effect.  I wonder whether I even have another 30 years. I’m not afraid to die, unless it’s violently. It’s just that there’s so much I still want to do, I find myself feeling panicked that I’ll run out of time.

I awaken in the morning and although I used to look forward to eating breakfast and having that first cup of coffee, all I want to do is turn over and bury myself in the blankets. I used to love my work. But the cumulative effects of too many and unrelenting demands over too long a period of time in an increasingly no-win situation, too few staff (the ones I do have are FABULOUS), no positive reinforcement and little awareness of what actually happens in “a day in the life” from most have taken their toll on my body and my spirit. Someone had the audacity to say maybe I could “use” people more creatively to do the work of my department. My tongue bled though my real desire was to draw blood. I could do that creatively.  

My best friend and I talk about the earliest possible time we can retire, question whether we could retire now and survive financially (probably not), and wonder if we have sufficient emotional stamina to make it until such time as we can. She is feeling about the same as I am these days.

My “heart mother” tells me about a place in Vermont that attracts artists and craftspeople. My daughter sends me a position announcement for a job in upstate New York that she thinks would be perfect for me. [Can’t we find some place where it’s not so darned cold for half the year?] I go on realtor.com and check out the cost of real estate in warmer places. I wonder whether there is a place where the cost of living is less than where I live but where there’s enough happening to keep my interest and my neighbors don’t all hold political and social views that are polar opposites of mine. I consider and reject various parts of the country for that reason, the terrain or the weather. I’m not afraid of uprooting myself, of going where I know no one. I’ve done that before. But I also know better than to believe in the geographical cure. And as if to caution me, there is an article on line this morning about moving where taxes are lower. The comments to the article are vehement in pointing out what citizens give up in services to get lower taxes. Sadly, there is no easy solution. 

Still something needs to change, whether it's circumstances or something inside me. A friend from my co-op, now happily retired, and I used to walk together in nice weather and talk about our upcoming “dreads” for each week. Once the “dreads” were isolated events…. Now they are full days.

I’ll figure it out. I’m pretty resourceful. I’ll stop the wheels from spinning before the tires blow out. I must.