A small nod to the elephant

I'm voting today. After several sessions spent filling out my ballot in the leisurely, considered manner afforded us here in enlightened Washington state (where we got our ballots in the mail two weeks ago), I'll walk to the drop box outside my library later this morning and officially exercise my franchise. Then as best I can, I hope and plan to tune out this election until sometime late Tuesday night, or maybe even Wednesday morning.

Isn't it ironic that the already-protracted, hyper-agitated 2016 election will fall on the latest possible date it can? (It needs to be on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.) If I could, I'd be in New York City to see Hamilton, one of the only shows-that-must-go-on Tuesday since it's sold out (and seriously, what better way would there be to spend Election Night 2016?).

But that's not an option, so here are three ways I've been avoiding the elephant in the room. Perhaps you'd like to try them, too.

1) I've been limiting my media consumption, traditional and social alike. A little NPR in the morning goes a long way. Social media at night is an especially bad idea for restful sleep. Set a timer. Walk away.

2) I'm listening to music. Really listening. Music as meditation. Nine minutes and 23 seconds of So What is both soul balm and mental floss.



But if you need something more topical, try this on for size.



3) I'll watch a movie or two on Tuesday night. In 2012, I was one of about a half-dozen people who watched Argo at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, CA, as an effective means of avoiding election returns for as long as possible. This year, I'd recommend Dr. Strange, which my sweetie and I saw on its opening day Friday. This marvelous mind-warp isn't any weirder than anything we've seen in the news this year, and it's far more more fun.

May the force be with us, America.

Autumn is sending you invitations

This was one of the first fallen autumn leaves I saw this year, on September 17, by itself on a sidewalk in my neighborhood. I took its picture and posted it on Instagram and Facebook with the caption, "This seems to happen earlier these days. #fleeting #cultivatecalm." About two dozen of my Facebook friends and acquaintances liked the post, and one added a comment:

Autumn is sending you invitations!

Sometimes I'm tempted to give up social media, but it's moments like this I know I probably never will. I've been meditating on Sara's five words ever since that day, thinking about why the falling leaves are astonishing and poignant and meaningful, and why they become more so every year we spend on this planet.

This has been a year full of reflection for me. On the nature of work, as always. On the importance of love, and the balance between solitude and companionship. These matters merit my attention, and they help direct my attention to the handful of people who need me most (and from whom I am learning the most, too).

This blog takes its name from something Henry David Thoreau wrote, something I first read on a bumper sticker at the Walden Pond gift shop, "Surely joy is the condition of life." I bought three or four stickers and gave them to friends over the years. At long last, during my Wellspring travels and our study of the writer's work earlier this year, I was compelled to finally read this phrase in its context.

In his 1842 essay Natural History of Massachusetts, Thoreau wrote of growing weary of politics and even "the din of religion, literature, and philosophy," then he describes how his spirit is continually refreshed and renewed by nature, by

the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon the bank.

And so it is for me. The first big windstorm of the fall is due tonight. It's raining now, and rain is forecast for the next week and probably for the next month, since this is October and it is Seattle. Yet I feel fortified for any darkness and uncertainty ahead by many walks in beautiful places this fall. I've been recording my impressions less in words and more in memories and photos, because that's where I am in my life.

I don't write here much, and I don't post much on social media. I take comfort (and, yes, joy) in what Thoreau says about "the inexpressible privacy of a life -- how silent and unambitious it is."

Autumn's invitation to me, especially in this season of din and angst, is to dare to be unambitious, to dwell in the present moment, to recognize and gratefully acknowledge gifts as they're revealed to me, and to share when I am moved to do so.

Thanks, Sara, and HDT, too.

How may I help you?

The 2016 Seattle International Film Festival is winding down. Among several good films Tom and I caught this year was Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. This new documentary had a big take-away for me beyond its entertaining look at Lear's genius as a pop culture provocateur. The a-ha moment came as Lear described why, in 1981, he pivoted from his focus on producing hit TV shows to founding a political advocacy organization, People for the American Way. As he tells filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, it was simply time to exercise some different muscles.

I can relate. As I near the midpoint of my 50s, I'm close to the age Lear was when he felt that pull. After three-plus decades of work in communications, I find myself wanting to stretch different muscles, all while I keep my writing and editing mojo working, too.

My customer service muscle is the main one I'm working like never before. When I decided to leave my magazine editing job, I timed the departure for late winter for one big reason: I wanted to work at the ballpark this season. I left my job on Feb. 26 and successfully interviewed with the team on Feb. 29 (leap year, baby!), and now I'm a seating host in one of the most beautiful yards in Major League Baseball.

But wait, it gets better: I work the sections right behind home plate and my home team's dugout. A fan said to me last night, "You must have a lot of seniority to get to work where you do." No, I told her; I'm actually a rookie this year, and I'm just lucky.

Yes, I do get to actually watch much of each game. Mainly, though, our job as seating hosts is to be sure that all our guests have a great experience. We lost last night, as we've done quite a bit at home (despite having one of the best road records in baseball). People were naturally disappointed, but as I said farewell to folks on their way up the aisle, most had smiles on their faces. Our star had just struck out with two men on base, true, but he'd clobbered two homers earlier in the game. We win some, we lose some, and there's never a truly awful day at the ballpark.

I got to tie a baby's shoe. I got to talk with a proud dad whose son is playing college ball. And while it's true that I'm making way, way less money than I did as an editor in chief, I'm having a blast. I like customer service so much, in fact, that I've taken a second part-time job at a bookstore that also sells travel gear. Nearly everyone who comes in is excited about a trip they have planned, so it's a fun, energetic place to be.

Of course, these jobs are also giving me a renewed appreciation for how hard people are working at or near the minimum wage, and how many people work multiple jobs to make ends meet. That's another post, perhaps for around Labor Day, but I'll put in a plug here for the book a college classmate of mine wrote about her detour from journalism into the floral department at Kroger. Best $6 you'll spend this year. 

I've also been stretching my inner artist muscle. I'll write about that next post, or the one after that. Meanwhile, thanks for reading, and keep seeing the bright side.

A few more words on being and doing

Sometimes, I think I am the world's laziest blogger. Or maybe I'm the smartest; I'm trying to reserve most of my writing for occasions I'll get paid for it. But no one's going to pay me for this list of what I've done so far today, in no special order, so here goes:


I woke up, made coffee, and read another chunk of yesterday's extensive New York Times article on one woman's voyage with dementia. Later, I sent a few emails and did a bit of research for an article I'm writing on a similar topic.


While making and eating some oatmeal, I listened to sports talk radio to get some perspective on the Mariners' season so far. (I have a part-time job at the ballpark now, but with the team on the road this week, I have even less scheduled time than usual.)

I took a walk. My first stop was my neighborhood city park, where I like to play something that looks and sounds like this, installed in the newly renovated playground last year. My tax dollars at work! I love it.

After that, I continued on down the residential street and saw a half-dozen other folks out enjoying a mid-day walk in the sun, many with their doggies. I made my way to our neighborhood's small commercial district, where I stopped at the library to pick up a book on hold; at the thrift store, in search of something I want for my Wellspring art project; then passed through the leafy grounds of Lake City Court, a green public housing project I love to traverse whenever I get a chance.

I got home and brewed some ice tea, and noticed one of my favorite phrases (and one germane to this topic) on one of the tea bags, so I took a photo and 
made an Instagram post about it.

Then I wrote this post. 
Next, I am going to have a late lunch ... or perhaps it is an early dinner ... read some more ... and listen to the ballgame while I putter around the house a bit.


Last week, I met with my Wellspring spiritual companion. She mentioned my last real blog post of more than a month ago -- I told you I've been a lazy blogger! -- and how she especially liked the part about the shift from doing mode to being mode. I agreed and said that very idea has been ringing in my ears ever since, too. To recap author David Levy distilling the words of psychologists Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale:


Being mode "is characterized by a sense of freedom, freshness, and unfolding of experience in new ways. It is responsive to the richness and complexity of the unique patterns that each moment presents." In doing mode, on the other hand, "the multidimensional nature of experience is reduced primarily to a unidimensional analysis of its standing in relation to a goal state."


It's been two months since I left the professional-grind track. Being mode is how I am these days. I'm getting stuff done, but my random acts of productivity seem much more incidental than central to my existence.


Some days, this way of life still feels weird. Other days, especially on a summer-vacationy-day like today, it feels like one glorious Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. It's sure as heck a more healthy way than I've lived much of my adult life. I'm eager to find ways to keep at it.

Spring fancy free

Blossoms, baseball, and warm sun all signal that spring is here. It is time to be in the world.

I'll post again soon, but for now, here's a William Blake quote I've been turning over in my head and my heart.



He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise
(Wikisource)

(Thanks to Nathan Schneider, who mentioned this passage in his On Being interview with Krista Tippett.)

Mindful busyness

I've read two good books this month: Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives by David M. Levy and The One Who Is Not Busy: Connecting with Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way by Darlene Cohen.

On the surface of things, I live a simplified, streamlined life. But when it comes to mental clutter, I have plenty. Yes, I take refuge in the idea that creative people have messy minds, but I also know that mess creates stress. So I'm open to ideas, tools, and practices that can help me declutter my brain and work style as successfully as I've decluttered my life. Mindful Tech has already helped me.

Levy has spent a career in the information sciences, but he also has studied calligraphy and bookbinding. Since 2001, he's been a professor at the University of Washington's Information School, where, as he writes on the UW website, "I have mainly been investigating the challenge of achieving contemplative balance–how as individuals and as a society we might live healthy, reflective, and productive (lives) while participating in an accelerating, information-saturated culture."

In other words, Levy doesn't advocate that we unplug from our devices. He suggests that we pay more attention to how we are when we're online: whether the sight of a full email inbox makes us hyperventilate, whether we get into a pleasant state of flow or an anxious fear of missing out when we surf around social media, whether our muscles tense when an alert tone sounds on our phone, whether I ignore the bell that nudges me to stand up, stretch, and breathe.

The passage of the book that spoke most deeply to me is one in which Levy quotes a trio of psychologists (Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale) on a shift from "doing mode" to "being mode."

Here's the difference: Being mode "is characterized by a sense of freedom, freshness, and unfolding of experience in new ways. It is responsive to the richness and complexity of the unique patterns that each moment presents." In doing mode, on the other hand, "the multidimensional nature of experience is reduced primarily to a unidimensional analysis of its standing in relation to a goal state."

Bingo! As a journalist, I've been dwelling in doing mode for my entire professional life. Deadlines are the "goal state," and I'm comfortable there, when I need to be. However, when I add ceaseless heaps of administrative work to the mix, it's really hard to be in "being mode" for any length of time.

That's why a mention of Darlene Cohen's book in Levy's work was intriguing to me. The One Who Is Not Busy seems less a title than a mirage. Is such a state really possible to achieve in today's work world? Indeed, Cohen -- who passed away in 2011 -- published this book in 2004: pre-Great Recession, pre-widespread disruption, pre-Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. A dozen years later, companies are expecting ever more of their employees, and we're more distracted than ever.

In a chapter titled "Living Seamlessly," Cohen plays a similar chord to the one that most struck me in Mindful Tech. If we can give each activity our full attention, she writes, life becomes more than ticking off tasks on a list. Usually, she adds, we're preoccupied with the goal, "the 'why' of our activity. If we can soften the exclusively goal-specific focus that we usually bring to our work concerns and start to pay attention not just to what furthers our goals but to everything inside us and around us, we have vastly enlarged our own playing field." And I sense that play really is an operative word here. Many of us take our work far too seriously.

Cohen offers a menu of complicated exercises that would probably work better via an audiobook (and I plan to record a few as voice memos to give them a try), yet her advice essentially boils down to "one thing at a time" and staying in the present moment. We may be super busy, but she says that if we can practice two core skills -- 1) the ability to narrow or widen the mind's focus at will and 2) the ability to shift focus from one thing to another (from "narrow" to "narrow" to "narrow"), we can improve the quality of our work lives, no matter how manic or mundane they may be.

Levy's aim is more straightforward: to help readers pay attention and be more intentional about our tech use. Since his book is brand new, he's more mindful of the increased demands on our time and mental bandwidth.

Paying attention and being more intentional are things we can all do. Even those tasks are huge and take practice, but the alternative is sleepwalking through life.

Successful failure

Today's #UULent word is failure. A joke about UUs is that we read ahead in the hymnal to make sure we agree with the words we're about to sing. Well, I've been reading ahead on the list of words we've been asked to ponder, and today's is one I'd rather skip. (Especially coming a mere five days after mistakes last Friday. But we learn from our mistakes. Failure seems less noble, somehow. And isn't this a blog about joy?)

Still, I know it's spiritually useful to face the things we'd rather ignore. So this morning, as I consider failure, I'm thinking about two things: baseball and politics. Spring training opened yesterday, and my team won 7-0. Exciting! Success! Being an 18th-century Brit, Alexander Pope surely didn't have baseball in mind when he penned the phrase "hope springs eternal," yet it's perfect for a pastime that makes its annual debut in sync with this sublime season of newness.

I know that my team will lose 80 games or so this year. Everyone wants to win the World Series, but honestly, finishing over .500 is a more attainable goal. Along the way, the best hitters will succeed only a third of the time, and the best pitchers will lose at least a handful of games. But it's OK. Even the worst team in baseball will delight its fans 60 times or so before the boys of summer head home this fall. In sports, even amid failure, there's plenty of success. (Take it from Michael Jordan.)

Ten years ago, I was working as one of the nation's first paid Congressional campaign bloggers. On Election Night 2006, my candidate lost, as Democrats almost always do in Idaho -- but we had fun along the way, as this button attests. (I also remember walking in many small-town parades that summer as part of the Grant for Congress Clean-Up Crew, with our mops and brooms.)

From the candidate on down, we were a team of talented amateurs who'd suddenly turned pro. We really didn't know how to play the game, so we made a lot of mistakes. Yet on Election Night, we came within 5 percent of winning (in a district where the Dem is routinely beaten by 20 percent or more), and we helped pave the way for another, better-funded candidate with more Machiavellian management to win the next cycle.

I worked in politics for another six years, and it usually wasn't so fun. I experienced moral failure even amid victory, and many failures of imagination. I got out of the political game for good three years ago, blessed with an opportunity to return to journalism, and I won't be going back because I know that (for me, anyway), it is not soulful work.

Today, as I think about failure, I'm also thinking about a podcast I heard a few months ago with Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown in which they tackled the topic at length. Brown mentions how her question used to be "What would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?" but it had evolved to "What's worth doing even if I fail?" Gilbert agrees and says we ought to let go of the idea of "it worked or it didn't work; it was a success or it wasn't a success." Of the creative life -- which of course is all of life -- Gilbert also suggests that it's better to be a trickster than a martyr. (That's another post ... or five.)

I know this baseball season will be a success because we'll all have fun along the way. I feel the same way about my return to independent writing.

My life has been a lot more joyful when I've been a trickster -- and when I've understood and embraced the concept of successful failure -- than when I've taken things way too damn seriously. I wish the same for you.