Category: tricia

Hunt for the Red September

I reached enlightenment. More on that, in a bit.

For about two weeks, I’ve been hanging out with this guy named Craig. My fiance is OK with this, though, ’cause she knows I’m only after him for his List, and oh what a list. We are out-growing our awesomely located one-bedroom in Boston’s Back Bay, and were looking for a two-bedroom in Cambridge, just across the river.

So, I start casually perusing this list for possibilities, making a collection of potential abodes. I email and/or call the associated realtors, asking to see what I think will be my next home. “Yeah, so, um, it’s taken, sorry,” I hear.

So, then I set aside some time to seriously eye-ball this list for my next home, keeping in mind we have already shared with our current landlord that we will not renew our lease at $150 more per month. We’re hearing horror stories from folks looking to make our current mini-palace their next home, those lucky bastards ducks, stories of how rent is going up 20% in Boston & Cambridge, and how good housing options are quickly disappearing. I set up appointments with realtors. “Yeah, so, um, the internet is out-of-date, I should’ve removed that post, it’s taken, sorry,” I hear.

So, now I’m not just eye-balling Craig’s List, I’m getting physical. I’m upping my game. I’m getting emails. I’m getting numbers. I’m looking over pictures. Like it’s my job. I am training myself to become a full-fledged artist and picking up my next place of shelter. Failure is not an option, I am not going home to a cold bed (…I need a roof over it).

This fire under my butt led me to thinking sleep was a waste of time. So was eating. So was work. I’m serious. As animals, we supposedly need food, clothing, and shelter, and to this end, my hunt for the September rental was all-encompassing.

(Stick with me, the enlightenment part is coming up!)

On Tuesday, I was lined up to see three places, blank check in pocket and prepared to sign a rental application. I saw the first place, and while the realtor essentially lied about what came with the apartment (c’mon, there either is or is not a dishwasher, big difference, don’t tease me like that) (…as you can see, I haven’t been able to let that one go), I liked everything else about it and took it off the market.

Put me on an aircraft carrier in a jumpsuit behind a podium: Mission Accomplished.

Bonus: on my way to fill out the rental application, I see that our favorite cafe/bakery is relocating to down the street from where we’ll live. ZOMGWTFBBQ. Too cool. Zeus is indeed smiling down on us from Mt. Olympus.

As I sit at a counter, waiting for my celebratory beer, I realize I have no thoughts. None. This scares me. I think hard. I’m looking for thoughts. Maybe if I start writing, thoughts will fumble out. This is what I am able to produce:

This is what.
This is what?
What is this?
No, this is… what?
I think I have nothing in my mind… have I reached enlightenment? I’m… flowing.
I’ve been wanting something fervently for so long, and now that I have it… I’m done… wanting?
What’s next in the flow?
So… just do that, without stress.
Just do ‘now’s.

This scares me a little more. Am I allowed to feel this free? Let’s get real, here: I searched for and found a rental apartment. Big whoop. Yet these past few days have been more… flowy, and less… stressed. That’s undeniable. I just identify what’s next on my daily backlog, and then… make that my ‘now’, do that ‘now’, be totally in that ‘now’.

And now, for the rest of my double cappuccino. It’s never tasted so damn good.

Engagement

Last week, I was disengaged from life.

In Boston, it started with the Marathon, the bombings, showers of sadness, and blooming examples of human goodness.

It ended with a man hunt, more bravery, more death, cities on lockdown on both sides of the Charles River, and the capture of a suspect, alive, ending one set of questions and spurring even more.

Folks around here dealt with all this differently; for me, the days in between were ones of angst and… blah. A party that caused mass injuries 3 and 4 blocks from where I live and STILL on the loose had me hooked on unraveling details and perfunctorily doing everything else.

I can give blood! Oh, they have enough. What else do folks need? Oh, so displaced marathoners & visitors need beds? OK, my name is on that list. What else can I do???

(Crowd-sourcing the analysis of submitted pictures and video was a great idea, I thought. It didn’t really output pictures of the current suspects, but I read it was a motivator for the FBI to release pictures of THEIR suspects.)

That week, I was disengaged from life.

Lost in events I could do very little about, I did a whole lot of nothing; my ScrumOfOne Sprint backlog was put on hold (including writing a post for this blog). Now, maybe not everybody is like this, but I have this itch to be productive. If I’m not moving forward with something, however tangentially, I feel like a slob, and that gets me down. For this completely different, yet derivative reason, last week bummed me out. Especially after blogging about how taking action means you are alive, doing something (anything) makes you a better person, last week I just floated, thus feeling less alive. (…yes, I am thankful I have all my limbs and that none of my friends or loved ones were directly affected…)

Once we got the (suspected) bad guy, I felt more at ease to catch up with daily chores and otherwise get back into being proactive, maybe even do something brave, requiring confidence, which would beget more confidence.

…something that would re-engage me with life…

I got engaged.

Agile Family

This blog documents the adventure of applying Scrum principles to my personal development.

I started a ScrumOfOne because I found it helpful with logistics as I moved into my own space in Boston’s Back Bay. (I carried my cheap bookshelf across town during a late January sleeting ’cause I guessed fewer folks would be out on the roads – I was right.)

Focus then shifted from dwelling development to personal development as I rediscovered pieces of myself. (That February, I was offered extra money to pull extra hours to get a couple of projects done, which I managed by sleeping on a yoga mat at work, not the newly purchased mattress at home. When the last thing you see before you close your eyes is the underside of your desk, you start questioning your choices.)

Having come to terms with what would bring me the most daily joy, what’s left is removing limiting beliefs, getting my butt in gear, and showering you with remixes of Wham’s Careless Whisper, all the while transparently tracking progress towards my vision, frequently adapting. (Adapting the stark abodal palette of browns and greys to oranges and giraffe heads with the addition of my loving partner in fun.)

Now, I can’t help but find the ScrumOfOne in what I read and hear and see, and it’s not so hard when it’s a TED Talk by Bruce Feiler called ‘Agile programming — for your family‘. The talk is much more than an application of Scrum (his last line is powerful), but here’s a primer:

The key idea of agile is that teams essentially manage themselves. … It works in software, and it turns out that it works with kids.

This is essentially family development through Scrum, and it is mentioned in his book, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More.

Do you want a happy life? Try.

How To Be An Animal

My sweetheart recently got me a book: How To Be A Man, A Guide to Style and Behavior for the Modern Gentleman by Glenn O’Brien. She knows I’m into this stuff, and found me a winner. (MUSHY ALERT!) Of course, I’ve already found me a winner.

The third chapter (they’re all bite-sizedly enjoyable) is entitled ‘How To Be An Animal’, wherein he mentions a very small set of things we as animals should get down, one of which is…

Getting enough sleep is essential. If God meant us to wake up at a certain time, he would have given our brains an alarm clock. (Oh wait, he did.) Sure you can get by on less sleep, but perchance to dream?

This is another sleep post (hm, exactly 11 months later). At least I’m more conscious (ha!) of how much less energetic I’ve been on the train rides back home as of late, and how I’m more often opting in to being an American that runs on Dunkin’. Entonces, ¡no mas! Time to bust this habit by creating a new habit to get at least 7 hours of sleep 4 times a week.

Sad to get to this point? Sure. And this is as good a time as ever to be a better animal.

Cleaning The Bathroom Is Perfect For Me

Let me set the scene.

It’s a Monday evening in the middle of November. I make it home from work, happily down warmed-up left-overs, and change. The heat’s on, but it’s still a little chilly, so the WPI Superfan t-shirt is accompanied by some cozy PJ pants, but because I’ll be standing in the bathtub, the pant legs are rolled up to my knees, preserving warmth and simultaneously setting a daring fashion trend. I step into the shower, spray, wait, and scrub.

Oh man, there are sooo many other things I’d rather be doing:

  • Beatboxing with my KP3
  • Writing another blog post
  • Clearing up my desk
  • Making a sandwich
  • Eating a sandwich
  • Watching ‘How I Met Your Mother’ on Netflix
  • Reading that book I started a while back
  • Drinking a cappuccino
  • Purging my inbox

Nope. I agreed to do this. So I should just shut up and do wha-

My head keeps racing, though. The thought of a cappuccino AND reading that book seems fantastic; such a simple joy, such an immensely better joy than the scrub-a-licious activity at hand. My appreciation for the value of an hour grows considerably while in the shower …not showering. It gets me wondering if I could exchange something I have, like money, for somebody ELSE to do this …service. Heck, James Bond probably doesn’t clean the bathroom. He also doesn’t ever GO to the bathroom, unless it’s to kill somebody. Maybe he sweats and bleeds it all out. Then again, he probably somehow pays to have other people do that for hi-

That’s when a phrase hits me. It grazes my elbow, but I get the gist of it. There is a life coaching technique out there where whenever you’re in a situation that is sub-optimal (mind the light euphemism), ask yourself:

How is this perfect for me?

Reframe that sucker. Dig deep to find that silver lining. Be creative in determining how this is actually good for you, like medicine. Start the unfathomable sentence, then finish it, like so:

Cleaning the bathroom is perfect for me …because… it brings me into the present moment and into my body (as I partake in the minutiae of scrubbing grout).

Sure, I’m panning for gold, but hey, you know what else I get from cleaning the bathroom?

Another blog post.

PRE-APOCALYPTIC POST-SCRIPT:

Let me set another scene.

I’m in the cafe I frequent. I’m not arugula a regular. I’m a super-regular. I’m sitting at the bar, where everybody knows my name. I’m not kidding. In my ear is a whisper. I say, “Thank you, dear,” and decide to append to the above with the following.

There was a cold fact: the bathroom was being cleaned by me. On its own, this fact is rather… impersonal, emotionless. Up until the whisper, I associated one story with the experience, then another. My first story was, “Dag nabbit, dog gonnit, what the firetruck, this is all kinds of no fun, and I hate my life.” My second story was, “Here I float on a cloud… ah, such levity and freedom… and yet I am grounded, connected with the rest of existence… wholly present in sensing every last detail of the current event of which I am an active part… oh, how wondrous is this life.”

Pffffffffft – just kidding; that second story was nowhere close to what I was able to pull off, but was the direction in which I was going.

The whisper shed light on how these two very different stories, associated with the same one experience, were two very different perspectives, thus two very different realities of the same one experience.

OK. Seriously. I can’t believe how much I am squeezing out of this. Cleaning the bathroom was perfect for me!