Insights

This weekend has been a roller coaster and I've detected - and maybe modified - some old patterns of mine. I want to capture this before it is lost to the day-to-day busyness and noise.

I've known for a long time this: When the going gets tough, Nan gets sick. The fact there is a mind-body connection, and that bad things manifest themselves in my body, is not news. No point in recapping that history here. What I have learned, and repeated more than once, is that I can be great in a crisis. I rise to the occasion, I step up, I take responsibility, and I help. But eventually, I'll collapse. The toll comes due and carries interest as well.

However, observing this and changing it are two different things. I've learned some self-care techniques, from exercise to meditation and (always) eating well. These things help, and can pull the worst of the reaction down, once I recognize it. Not yet can I avoid it.

But here's an additional insight I got this weekend: Sometimes, the trouble and the crisis I'm trying to fix are not mine.  Apparently, I don't have enough trouble of my own, so I have to borrow it from others. Hearing of trauma from others hurts me. Literally. This is tied to the difference between sympathy and empathy, but that is a complicated discussion I'm not going to dive into now.

The issue for me (and this recent insight) is not that I can be empathic (I feel others' situation as if it were my own) but that I have a Joan of Arc complex about it, thinking it's then up to me to fix it. Not everything can be fixed, and it's not always mine to fix. I don't have to be responsible for everything.

The government shutdown has been a slow-boiling crisis for me. The first day or two were frantic, pushing buttons and lining things up, then empty echoing halls as everything poked along on inertia. But as time went on, you will have seen in the news that not all was well in our national aviation system. For me personally, money started to take on a new importance. 

Being St. Joan has worked out well for me at work. I wouldn't be in the position I'm in if I didn't borrow trouble and try to fix it. I've been working hard, using all my skills, and in a rage that absolutely none of this effort would be necessary if ... [no point in recapping].  Friday was the boiling point. St. Joan was asked to step up into a major role. Then, mid afternoon, relief! (BTW, a text from Liz was the first clue of the end.) 

So on the down side of adrenaline, late Friday night came a knock on the door. An acquaintance, friendly but not a close friend, my long-time dog walker, told me her dog was missing. Aggie is the twin of my Rocky, a chocolate lab. She was asking for help getting the word out electronically to our neighborhood email group. Of course I did that. It was too cold and dark to be able to go out searching myself, but I begged her to keep me in the loop so I'd know whether to go out in the morning.

So I slept badly, rather than contented from the end of the shutdown. I woke up sluggish and in pain all over. I had planned a productive weekend, but I was derailed. Aggie was still missing, and I broadened the electronic search, shared all my other ideas for where to call and what to do, and thought about going out searching. But I didn't want to. I had my own stuff to do. I was in too much pain to move much. The weather was crappy (not that crappy). I didn't want to go look. And, it's looking for a needle in a haystack, even with my own dog as bait, especially after so many hours. I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of the task. So I decided not to go out, but my body was freaking out. This is the guilt that comes from feeling its my job to fix everything even though I can't.

I meditated, and re-visited a lesson in my cognitive training program about boundaries. I did another guided meditation. I posted in my cognitive training group, presenting a rough outline of the dilemma and asking for help. I got out of my chair, and started slowly on a chore that was at the bottom of my to-do list, but still was something. (Note: procrastination strategy of using work as an excuse for not working.)  In my group, I got a lot of affirmation about how people like us (we share a lot of characteristics) borrow trouble all the time and don't have to fix everything. And I got a specific useful yardstick: what would you expect someone else to do for you? Little bit of golden rule popping up, allowing boundaries to form and giving myself position to not always be St. Joan.

Good news!  Aggie was found, and it was from one of my messages that she was reunited with her family! So, St. Joan came through, which is maybe a mixed bit of feedback to me.

So, have I learned about how to cope with being overwhelmed? How to minimize my physical manifestation of being overwhelmed? No, though there is progress. And I think I've really gained an insight on the borrowing trouble front. I'm feeling better today, and will continue to work on these things.

Moving

(New but cheap) dress and leggings and short boots.

My pants don't fit!  I mentioned that before, but it's really a thing. I told everyone at work I made a resolution to wear more dresses (HA!). I had to break my no-spending vow to buy some clothes - I went on the internet, scored big with sales, but NONE OF THEM FIT ME! I've grown more than I realized, and it's not my swollen knee. I returned them, and tried again at another site in a bigger (gasp) size. Due here Thursday. Till then, dresses or yoga pants. It's cold out, so I'm experimenting with leggings and boots.

It's driving me nuts not to know what's happening on the scale. I'm focusing on how I feel and how things fit. I'm moving a lot more than the past few months. I'm able to get out of the building at lunch and walk on the generally deserted mall. I've given myself a pass on walking the dog at night when it's dark, cold, and/or precipitating. (I have a large fenced yard for his basic hygiene.) "Move" to me means to keep moving as much as possible in every possible way (including chores such as bill-paying) but it also means literally, My fitbit tracks how many hours I get at least 250 steps in an hour, and I've been doing much better during this shutdown. The pace of work is totally different - few meetings, phone calls, or emails - but each is complex and multi-faceted as we move into uncharted territory for the government. But I have to be much more self-disciplined on how to spend my time because there are few immediate deadlines and always other considerations. So I walk more in the building, and it helps me think.

I know that exercise is not the way to lose weight, and yet it's key to losing weight. I'm trying hard to feel what I eat, feel what I'm hungry for, and go all in on mindfulness. I am tracking what I eat - daily - but not in any cumbersome tracking system, just mentally tallying it a few times a day, and always in the context of whether it's satisfying and if I need or want something else. So no vows of what not to eat, but thoughtful decisions in the moment. All in my ideal. And without daily feedback on whether the approach is having an effect on the number on the scale, I have to get feedback from how I feel.

I think exercise will be helpful in getting my pants back on. I'm thinking toning, building muscle, not weightloss. So MOVE remains my motto.

Money

The thought of not having enough money terrifies me. The thought of having to constrain and count and choose where to spend every penny is frightening. The knowledge that when I retire I won't have an ample paycheck flowing my way every two weeks makes my breath turn ragged and fast, as if I were fleeing something. But suddenly, here I am, with a zero-dollar paycheck last week, and another one (not) coming Friday. 

I am in the fortunate position of having made more money than I needed ever since I started work right out of grad school with an MBA in finance. I am very aware that this good financial fortune is not a result of personal virtue but rather the way our society values certain activities. Not to mention the start I got from having been born into a privileged family, race and class. (I contrast my earnings with those of a good pal who got a Master's of Library Science from my same school at the same time as me - she has worked as hard and dedicated a career as me, but without the same financial rewards. Not due to personal virtue is my money.) But from the first paycheck on, I haven't needed to budget. Money comes off the top to savings, I spend what's in my checking account, and big things are planned and managed within the savings. Only two years of my working life have I not net-saved: the year my wildlife photography hobby caused me to be bit by the flying bug, and the year my sister died, when I paid cash for her funeral and carried the family until things stabilized. But I was not responsible for college tuition, the single biggest investment most families have to make. (Note: life insurance. All families should have life insurance, my sister was well insured, and that has paid for college for the kids.)

But my financial good fortune is not unblemished. The first two companies I worked for were record-setting bankruptcies, and as a result their pensions were turned over to the government backstop, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. And hooray for the fact there is a government backstop - I know the system has shifted so there are fewer defined-benefit programs in existence anywhere. The PBGC exists as a safety net, and doesn't pay out benefits at the same more generous rate the companies promised at the time. And the PBGC is supposed to be financed by the companies relying on it - but may itself need a bailout in the future. I tried to catch up. When I moved to the government twenty years ago, I maxed out the government version of a 401K every year - but starting such a thing in one's forties is not the same thing as a whole career of planning and saving.

The fact that I haven't had to budget doesn't mean I don't know where my money goes. I was an early adopter of Quicken for tracking my money, and now have switched to Mint. I almost never use cash, I just charge everything, and it gets recorded automatically. So I have the data to know what I have spent in the past, and to estimate what I need in the future. Of course I have charts and make graphs! Over the past couple of years, I've started to get a handle on this as I try to decide if I have enough money to retire.

But tracking and knowing where my money goes is not what "having a budget" means to me. The way I think of it, to have a budget means to have a plan and live within constraints. To decide in advance where the money will go, and manage spending so that is where it does go. And when the budget is spent, stop there and don't spend any more. This is foreign to me.

When I sat down and analyzed my spending about a year ago, I noticed areas I could save, and made some changes. This was a test case, trying to get ready for retirement. For a person who lives alone, I spend a ridiculous amount of money on food. I paid attention, cooked at home from scratch, wasted less, and was successful at a major cut in that spending. It didn't last, I got lazy, but I was reassured I didn't need to spend that much and I was capable of managing it - I just need to put in the work. I did some other things to manage fixed expenses. The big thing was to pay off the mortgage, just a few months early, but DONE. I have one more big recurrent item to fix - cut the cable TV. I keep postponing it, though as a general rule I only watch HGTV, and record a couple of shows to watch later that could be purchased on Amazon or Hulu. Right now, my excuse is to binge watch the whole season of The Good Place that is on my DVR, and then I'll call Verizon. But the truth is, I hate talking to Verizon and so that's why I put it off.

For retirement, I spent quite some time with Jane Bryant Quinn's How to Make Your Money Last. She really laid out from beginning to end how to do the analysis of whether you have enough money, and talked through different strategies, investment types, etc.. So I did my own analysis, somewhat sketchy, but pulling together the information needed was the hardest part. So I compared what I need and what I want to spend, to my resources - four different future income streams, each fairly small, plus my retirement savings accounts. I reached the conclusion I have enough money to get by in most scenarios (especially since the mortgage is paid off) but it's not clear to me how much more than the basics I can afford to spend. I've had a financial advisor for a few years, but I'm switching because we don't click. The new one I know from his previous career, and I can talk frankly and openly to him. He agrees I have "enough" and has recommended some moves on the investments that make some sense. 

In November, we went out to Ann Arbor to visit Alex at school. I have some dear friends there, a few years older than me, and I talked frankly and at length to them about money and fears and how do they manage. It's hard to describe how helpful it was to be able to share this discussion with someone who is there already. They are easy going, which is easier when you are comfortable, but that's their style anyway. It is really those conversations that got me over the hump from "if" I retire this year to "when".

I would be filing paperwork to retire with my agency right now were there people in place to accept and process the paperwork. We have good websites, and I've reviewed and downloaded the forms, but there are many choices to be made and no-one to answer questions. For that reason, and for another I won't go into here, my original plan for April Fool's Day will likely get pushed back. The comforting thought I have is every additional month I work is lots more money in the bank than I'll get in retirement. Of course, that's not strictly true, since right now no money at all is going to the bank but there is a law that says I will get back pay. 

So how am I handling zero-dollar paychecks? I have resources. I have a savings account, and don't have to touch retirement savings for several months. It's taken a while for me to grasp that I don't have money coming in, and the prudent thing to do is not spend any money I don't have to. So I've clamped down on my spending, but not eliminated it. Back to trying to cook at home. Wasting less food, eating out of my freezer and cabinets instead of running back to Whole Foods every night. Postponing the final phase of my home renovations. Not ordering the plants I was planning to order for my new garden (and if I work longer I'll not have as much time to plant this spring anyway). My biggest expense for the past two weeks has been lunch during the week. I decided to buy my lunch from the small businesses near my office who are hurting and who won't get back pay. (Such a noble sacrifice on my part, yes?) I'll be fine, though I fear our country is sustaining damage that we'll never fully understand. 

A few years ago, in the midst of a "take this job and shove it" moment at work, I developed my Plan B. I would rent my house, move onto the boat, bungy-cord a milk-crate on the back of the Vespa, and get a job delivering Chinese food. Now, I've renovated my house to be able to gracefully age in place, and if I needed to, I could rent a nice little space in the basement. I could always find another job, and it's possible some work will find me. So once I close my eyes and jump off that career bridge, I'll monitor how things are going, and I have some Plan B approaches if needed. I'll be fine. But it's still scary.

Chronic

I wrote this post at the end of November, during a period when I felt REALLY bad. Since then, I continue working on my mindfulness, I've had my knee operated on, it's getting better, and I have good and bad days in the rest of my body. Today is a bad day, but maybe not as bad as this post depicts. My current theme of MOVE is my main focus of how to feel better. I continue the mindfulness and brain training practices as well, and I'm convinced I can get strong and better without any more overt medical interventions.

I've been feeling persistently bad, every day for a long streak. This has been a way of life, but it's more acute and long-lasting right now than my memory would indicate.  This post will be venting about how very lousy I feel. I want to just get it out there, no sugar-coating. Know that I am analyzing causes and working on solutions, but right now, I feel bad and just want to complain. Contrast this with my post from August, when the bad feelings seemed to be in remission for a while. I felt pretty good this morning, a glimpse of what I felt like then.

Here is my life for the past few weeks:

I fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow, usually around 10 pm. Sometimes, I set up a meditation to play, but usually I'll fall asleep before its done. I carefully position myself in bed, generally on my back with pillows under my knees, to get my lower spine in neutral position. I'll wake up after midnight, and roll on one side or the other, moving a pillow to support a knee so it doesn't twist my torso. I'll toss and turn several times during the night, always struggling with positioning the pillows. Thoughts are racing, rumination is rampant, and 2-3 times a week I'll tee up another guided meditation, which often but not always calms me down and I fall back asleep. (The facts: according to Fitbit, I get an hour of deep sleep a night, an hour-and-a-half of REM sleep, am awake an hour cumulatively, and the rest is light sleep. This makes me a champion sleeper compared to their database of women my age, who are generally awake for 2+ hours during the night and get much less deep sleep than me.)

I've come to dread getting out of bed, because I am so stiff I'm crooked, and in such pain it is hard to move. Do you remember the scene with the Red Woman at the Wall, when she took off her necklace and showed her real age? That's what I feel like when I get up. I've discovered that I literally cannot stand up straight - not that it hurts too much (though the pain increases the more I straighten) but there is a hard stop. The body just won't do it. I stagger to the bathroom, to the kitchen for coffee (hopefully set up the night before and ready for me) and to my reclining chair - my "morning chair" - with my ipad. The more I move during this setup, the better I start to feel, but it all hurts and I can't make myself just jump into exercise. I sit in my chair and check email, blogs, facebook, and the New York Times and Washington Post (both of which I pay for full access to). After 45 minutes or so I get up, and I can actually straighten up and move, though I'm still stiff.  I do some gentle exercises, which help, take a shower, which feels wonderful, and get dressed.

I go about my day, to work or other activities on weekends, checking in with my body. Headache? Check. Painful knee? Check. Aching in all muscles? Check. Lower back stiff? Check. Burning down my sciatic nerve from my butt to my ankle? Check. Lately, right rotator cuff twinging? Check. Feeling feverish but the thermometer says "no"? Check.

I get absorbed in things, and motionless, and mostly forget about the pain. Start to move, and I hurt and remember. If a meeting at work goes on too long, I have to move or I'm afraid I'll show how much it hurts when I get up. Often, I'll feel much better in the afternoon, and take advantage of that do more physical things. If I do too much, evenings are spent as a zombie.

I decided decades ago, when I first read about it, that I have fibromyalgia. Since there was nothing to do for it other than improve diet and exercise, I didn't tell any doctors or pursue a diagnosis but just tried to pull myself through it, with some fairly substantial success though some very bad days along the way. I was screened for lupus, cleared definitively, but the doctor told me I have some auto-immune issues which could lead to a rabbit hole of diagnosis and medication, or I could just go about my life with what was then a minor inconvenience, cleaning up my diet and exercise. (I chose door #2.) I have been diagnosed with osteo-arthritis and migraines, sciatica, and right now with a torn meniscus in my knee. Don't be alarmed for me. I am certain I do not have any life-threatening diagnosis. I'll deal with the knee via surgery (let's go in and fix the mechanics) but I'm also convinced all my other ailments are both real physical issues and a manifestation of my mind at the same time. I hurt, and that is real. But there is no definitive physical reason I should hurt the way I do, and I can stop the suffering part of the pain. That involves therapy, and exercise, and meditation, and getting myself out of my rumination on how bad I feel.

Simply cataloging these ills right now has made me feel much worse. It's time to get up and move, taking me out of myself. Dwelling on this does not help, though I do specific exercises (both mental and physical) to also move me along.

I'm nervous about posting this. Does telling more people make it more real? Or less? Perhaps I'll save this as a draft, and only post it when I have something more positive to add.

Ugghh- Weight

So my motto is "move" and my plan is to be strong. I've decided not to focus on my weight.

This is not "rising above it" or a new, higher, consciousness. At least, I'm pretty sure I decided not to focus on it because it's such an ugly picture. Here is the last year:

Remember, the actual weight is in grey, the trend is the dark line

So, not at all a pretty picture. I obviously DO want to get this under control, but I've decided not to focus on, put specific rules on, what I eat. I want my focus to be on moving and getting strong.

Obviously, these things are related. Getting the weight under control will help me feel better and move better. But serious reductions in weight requires time, attention, focus, work. Not what I'm willing to do right now, I want to spend time moving. So I'll fall back on convenience foods, try to stay mindful, not ban sweets, try to make good choices in the moment anyway, but I'm not going to make it a big deal.

I've been weighing myself daily for over twenty years now. I don't want to break the streak, but I don't really want to even think about what the scale says. This is in an effort to get more tuned into my body and its internal messages. So, as I've done before, I put a sticky note over the scale reading - the wifi-connected device goes ahead and records the number in the cloud anyway, so it'll be there waiting for me when I want to go look. (As it turns out, Rocky snatched and gobbled the sticky note paper right away, so I'm going to have to try masking tape.)

One of the body signals I'm getting is that my tailored work pants are too tight. I briefly blamed it on my swollen post-surgery knee, but I don't think that still works - especially not for buttoning at the waist! I certainly don't want to have to buy new work clothes right now, so the one bright aspect of being essential during this terrible government shutdown is I can get away with yoga pants at work. (Because it's all about me, of course.)

My theory of my tight pants includes the thought that truly I've lost muscle tone, with the sore knee even before the surgery cutting back on my exercise, and I can get the pants to fit through toning even without weight loss. We'll see.

What's the Motto with You?

(Sorry, die-hard Lion King fan here)

Happy New Year, all!

I've become something of a fan of Gretchen Rubin, who is all about making life better, not in grand, huge ways, but in a myriad of small ways that add up over time. She has a podcast, social media presence, and several books. I'm looking forward to her forthcoming book, Outer Order, Inner Calm.

On this week's podcast, she and her co-host, her sister, revealed their mottoes for 2019. They have been doing the one-word motto, or theme, on top of or instead of New Year's resolutions. Playing along as I drove into work yesterday, I settled on mine for 2019:  MOVE. 

A quick search turns up variants: Move on, Move up, Move it, On the move. Images range from arrows to trucks, all dynamic in some way. Having tested this as a thought for a day, I've adopted it for sure.

I fear I could settle into my chair with books and ipads and look up hours later with nothing done. "Move" to me is the anthesis of this. It's both broader and more specific than "Just do it" or "get things done". We'll see how having a motto works, but I anticipate thinking every morning, "what Move am I going to make today?" as a good way to start.

More later, but time to get moving.