One way to write a novel

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

PART 1: In which our heroine lays out the project and multiple objections

On Saturday night, we decided that I will write a novel. I stated my objections:

Objection the first/primary: What about money? Do I not need to exchange my time/life for money?

I have, on a notecard taped above my desk, a quote from Alan Watts recently sent to me from the Universe via a wise soul: Under all circumstances one should behave like the water, one should adjust to the requirements of the outer world, keeping safe his/her unchangeable essence in the meantime.

Adjusting to the requirements of the outer world is a tricky thing. Which are the REQUIREMENTS and which are not?

Outer requirement: One must meet the basic material needs of oneself and one’s offspring (and possibly other immediate family members, and pets, and neighbors in trouble?). Food. Water. Shelter. And immaterial needs. Love. Safety. Belonging.

Ah, belonging. There’s the rub.

Human beings exchange their time/life for belonging. For security. For experiences. For freedom. For stability. Of course, money can help provide some of these things, to some extent, but on its own cannot provide any of them. Lots more to think about here.

Decision: I have three months to write the first draft of a novel. I will continue to sell cosmetics. I may accept editing contracts that are proferred during this time, but will not pursue them. I will sell my coin collection.

Objection the second: a novel? An essay? A short story? A song? An album? If I spend time on one, I’m not spending time on the other. If I don’t write music now, will anyone want to hear (me perform) it in five years when I finally make the time? If I pick the wrong project now, and it doesn’t work, will I have to get a “real job” and the song/story inside will remain unsung?

Decision: You have an idea for a novel (well, lots of ideas but one that you would like to start now). Your songs are nice but (per counsel) your writing is better. Write songs if you want. Focus on the novel. Get a draft done. Find out if you can do it.

Additional note: NaNoWriMo (that is, National Novel Writing Month) begins November 1st. The objective is to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. There are tutorials, support groups, resources (etc.), and generally some community supporting creative endeavor so it seems fortuitous to begin at a time when there might be some human engagement more readily available (rather than sitting at home alone rocking and laughing at all the hilarious lines my amazing characters will be delivering).

Objection the third: Write a novel? Don’t you know the world is kind of in trouble?

I was in the carpool line to pick my kids up from school yesterday. From private school. Their school is located along a street where approximately 0% of the population are likely to be able to afford to send their kids to the school (many of the families at the school likewise cannot afford the tuition and many, like us, receive some not insignificant financial aid). Before pick-up begins, cars wait along the righthand side of the street in a long line, sometimes blocking driveways.

This was the case yesterday. We all shifted, some forward, some back, to allow a highly incensed man to pull his tall, very shiny, black pick-up truck into his driveway. It did take him an extra 30 seconds to pull in and I can definitely relate to feeling frustration when you get home and there is something blocking your parking space. It IS frustrating and it would be annoying to have all these Audis and Lexi, and the odd Tesla, blocking your drive each day at 3 pm. So he said something rude to one of the ladies in the line, I believe it was a nanny, in an unpleasant and not totally unthreatening tone, and then went inside the house.

Directly after this incident, I had pulled forward and there was a car parked on the side of the road next to me (a parent who had walked up to collect children rather than waiting in line, motor running, exhaust wafting up to wrap our planet in just a tiny bit thicker of a sweater) and so my car was about a foot more towards the left than most of the other cars. I was sticking out, ever so slightly, to the side when, from behind me, comes a towering monster of a truck. Grey. Chevy? Or Ford? Who can say. I don’t know much about motors or the mechanics of producing sound therein. I think, if you have your car in very low gear and you press the gas, say to the floor, you can create what turns out to be an unmistakably intentional and incredibly hostile sound. A chest-tightening, stomach-flipping sound that pretty clearly indicates to the lady in the car sticking out an extra foot from the line that you wish she would eat s**t and die. You hate her and her f***ing private school brats and she should go f** herself. I think that’s what the car was saying but I don’t speak engine so I could have some particulars of the translation wrong.

If you are me, next you start thinking about people who are mad and about guns and about children and schools. And then you start thinking about solutions and what could change and what is making that person so upset and what can be done and misinformation and power and people profiting from being divisive. And then thankfully your kids get in the car so all you can think about is keeping their bodies separate, explain why it is too late to change their minds and both be Odd Squad agents for Halloween, try to give a lesson in economics and explain the difference in cost and value, explain that while some kids do, in fact, buy whatever costume they have in mind each year for Halloween that’s not how it was when you were little and that’s not how it is going to be for them but you are happy to help them make something out of all the dress-up clothes at home. Explain that it is less about the expense than about the disposability and the consumer aspect of buying new costumes on a whim each year. You know you are no fun. Why can’t anything just be fun. So you spend the afternoon putting jewels on a crown with your daughter who has decided that she will use a dress she has and be a queen, even if the boys don’t like things like princesses and all that. Son still undecided.

So anyway, there are problems. They are big and they are scary. There are helicopters flying to the Pentagon all the time I can tell you. Let’s not get into this anymore here, I think we all know what I’m talking about.

So I’m going to write a novel. It’s not going to solve anything. But there have been some pretty awesome people in history who have thought it was a useful idea to write a novel. I am, statistically if for no other reason more closely linked to ability, unlikely to join in their ranks in terms of longevity and impact, but if many of my heroes and soulmates have been writers, maybe I can be excused from saving the world for a few months and try my pen.

(Silent and unspoken objection (the fourth)): No, I don’t think I’m Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens, or William Faulkner, or Umberto Eco, or Tolstoy, Forster, Byatt, Woolf, White (etc., etc.). I just want to write. Can I please just write? Can I?

PART 2: In which, after some slight delay, our heroine does, in fact, begin to write a novel

SO, Monday morning was my first morning for novel writing. I had it all blocked out in my calendar. 9-12 is for writing each day, five days a week (for three months, and if you can’t do it then DOOM!). I sat down to write. I found the four handwritten pages I had started two or so weeks ago, ready to type them into my laptop (still undecided whether to write by computer or hand), screens off after 9 PM as you know. I placed the sheets on the desk, directly next to the computer. And I had a thought. Maybe, just for a few minutes, I might have a quick peek at some Jane Austen. Just to get myself into the mindset. I picked Persuasion off of the shelf. I opened it to the first page. I read the first half of the book sitting at my desk. I got up and went to the bathroom. I sat on the pull-out sofa and read the second half with my eye on the clock noting I would have to leave to get the children by 3. I finished the book around 2:30. The whole book. And then I ate something, maybe some nuts.

The afternoon passed. The kids were fed, bathed, put in bed. Sam lay upstairs and sang himself to sleep (NSync’s Bye Bye Bye his current lulla(bye) of choice). I was tired and a bit off kilter having read the entirety of Persuasion that day. Well (I thought), I’m not going to type now (screens and all), I will read a different author. I revisited the same shelf, selected A Tale of Two Cities, unopened (by me) since 1990, and read until just after Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton have had dinner after Darnay’s (very close) reprieve from being quartered, meaning to be cut into quarters, your guts pulled out and burned while you’re still alive (book the second, chapter 4) – about one-third of the book. I slept fitfully (in case you are unfamiliar, this is not a ‘light’ book being mostly about human appetite for torture and beheadings and prisons, etc.).

The next morning, Tuesday, I KNEW that I could not spend another day in the same way. The novel must be begun!! But I just so happen to own a two-volume biography of Charles Dickens. I have had these two volumes on my “to read” shelf for several years. The shelf containing over one hundred books (with new books frequently added and old books rarely subtracted), it was not clear when reading about the life of Dickens would become the top priority. Well, it turns out Tuesday was the day. Just one chapter as I’m insatiably curious about his earliest childhood when his dad went to debtor’s prison and he was pulled out of school to work in a factory. I want to know a little bit about that. To imagine a mind like Dickens’ sitting in a blacking factory, glueing labels onto pots and sealing them for twelve hours each day, at age 11, not knowing if he would ever have another opportunity to do anything else. So I read for two hours and then went to the doctor, had some lunch, read just a little bit more.

STOP! (I reprimanded myself.) No more putting it off!! Start your novel already.

So I did. Tuesday after lunch. I re-read the handwritten stuff, adjusted, and got to 1,268 words by 3 pm. Again got the kids, kept them alive, fed, bathed, read (I forgot to mention we started reading Stuart Little on Monday night, Sam is LOVING it, so that’s three of my favorite authors in one day). I then spent the evening reading more about the life of Charles Dickens.

Let me set the scene carefully for what next precipitated (ha ha, you’ll get it in just a sec): In bed, Tuesday night, I was propped up against my (multiple) pillows, reading my little heart out, resting the book in an upright position against my body, most likely with one or the other eye closed (I rest them that way when I am tired) when something dirty fell out of the book and landed on my chest. Some brownish bit of grass or old leaves. I moved another page and more earthy material fell out of the book.

Four-leaf clovers.

About 10 four-leaf clovers were either tucked into or had just fallen out of a page towards the middle of the book. The last person to have intimate contact with this particular volume before me had amassed a collection of four-leaf clovers and pressed them in between the pages.

I don’t know if this was my grandmother’s book. Or my great-aunt’s book. Or my great-grandmother’s book (or some dude who liked to collect four-leaf clovers, it could have also been a man, of course). What I do know is that someone, and, knowing the tastes of my living relatives in terms of their likelihood of having read a Dickens biography in this lifetime, someone a long while ago, pressed a bunch of four-leaf clovers into this volume, sending me a message decades later.

Do you remember when I found that lucky quarter at Trader Joe’s and stopped playing addictive iPad games and healed my gut flora? Just imagine how much more powerfully some 60-year old four-leaf clovers found in a Dickens biography I had begun the same day as starting my novel might affect me. It’s a sign!

I wrote again on Wednesday (up to 2,993) and then Wednesday night began reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I want to reread To the Lighthouse but fear I gave my copy away in a clutter-clearing binge and so looked for fiction, by a woman, about the life of a woman. Slim pickings. There was only one choice on the “to read” shelf. I’m pretty sure I’ve read Their Eyes Were Watching God before but I recently took my sister’s copy from a shelf at my parent’s house – it feels familiar but I guess it would have been years and years ago that I read it. A little over halfway through with that one. Add it to the bedside stack.

So here it is Thursday and I’m writing this to update you on the latest and will move on to noveling next.

I like what I’ve written so far. I’m not sure what I’m doing exactly. I don’t have a plan. I’m sort of trying to excavate the bones (as Stephen King describes in On Writing). I’m sort of trying to write what I know. I know there are things to say. So I guess I’ll get to it now…

Cleaner energy for your home

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I know I keep saying this, but I am about to take some massive action. IT IS TIME! So stay tuned for that (or be forewarned, whichever feels appropriate). (And check out the Happy Atmosphere Challenge if you are new to the blog!)

I keep wanting to write a post about switching to clean(er) electricity but it requires some additional research so I keep putting it off instead of just sharing what I’ve done so far.

If you are concerned about climate change, one action you can take that is not super expensive and doesn’t take much time is to check out Arcadia Power. My electricity bill now comes from Arcadia Power and I have chosen to pay a few extra dollars each month so that my energy use supports a switch to clean energy.

This is a big topic and there is a lot to write/understand but there is not an easy way, in Virginia, to use only clean energy unless you install your own PV system. Arcadia pays for Clean Energy Certificates as a sort of offset of your energy use so that they are supporting the generation of clean energy SOMEWHERE to offset my dirty energy in Virginia.

The other option with Arcadia, that I am excited about, is you can buy a “share” (of sorts) in a clean energy (solar) project where they have installed solar panels on the roof of a building in New Jersey. I pay for a 10-year share of this project and then get a deduction on my energy bill each month equal to the amount of solar energy generated by the project (and my up-front funding supports the creation of new clean energy, builds demand, helps drive innovation in and incrementally decreases the cost of solar).

Another company to check out if you live in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania is Clean Choice Energy. It looks like, rather than providing offset certificates, you can actually source your electricity from clean energy facilities directly.

Supporting a shift to clean energy in this country and using market forces to move our country in this direction are KEYS to more carbon on earth, less in the air. I do not suggest that market forces are more important than policy, but it is something you can do TODAY. Call your senators, be upset, march, etc. AND SHIFT YOUR HOME’S ENERGY TO CLEAN SOURCES WHERE POSSIBLE.

If you live outside of Virginia, there are resources you can look at to see what is available in your area in terms of actually having your power supplied by renewable sources instead of using certificates (I will provide some links to resources in the future). Many of my readers live in redder states which may have fewer options in terms of clean energy so Arcadia may be a good solution for you.

Pros of switching to Arcadia today:

  • You can unswitch at any time. There is no contract, obligation, etc.
  • Your bill can remain the same. Unless you choose to upgrade to 100% renewable (which is only a few dollars more each month, depending on how much electricity you use), your bill will not increase. You will mostly be sending a market signal that you support renewable/clean options. This is valuable.
  • You can choose to support installation of new clean energy projects like the solar project I have joined. Cost starts at $100 which gets you a monthly deduction for 10 years, no matter where you might move.

I would love to get comments from any readers who have switched to clean energy to know about your experience and what is available in your area! I will compile any suggestions and add as resources under the Happy Atmosphere Challenge.

Just as a reminder, if you are reading this and don’t subscribe to the blog, and would like to have future posts (on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis) sent straight to your inbox, you can subscribe here!

Thanks for reading!!

Basic Training, My Song (updates)

Basic Training, My Song (updates)

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Basic Training Update

My four weeks of Basic Training are just about to wind up. In case you are very good at math or paying close attention, YES, it has been more than four weeks since I started. The beautiful thing about Basic Training, and this particular spreadsheet, is that it is fully adaptable. If you have sick children for a week, if you are sick, if you just forget, if it becomes overwhelming, if you decide to rebel for a day, YOU CAN JUST START AGAIN WHEREVER YOU ARE (as you can see in the photo of my spreadsheet, I stopped and started more than once).

If you get started and decide, hey, I don’t think dancing every day is a key to my wellbeing – or it is not the most important key to be focusing on at this point – YOU CAN CROSS IT OFF! Just cross it off. Leave the list on the fridge, with a big line through dance every day and that’s that. Dance if you feel like it.

If you get started and after one week you have a much better understanding of what activities might really work best, and they are different from the ones on your chart, YOU CAN START AGAIN!

(Caps are meant to indicate enthusiasm, no one is shouting here.)

For me, the most important lessons from my “four weeks” of Basic Training are that:

1) I can meditate!! That “monkey mind” that won’t be quiet when I try to meditate?? Noticing the incessant chatter of my brain is the whole reason TO meditate! If you try and your mind just won’t stop THINKING, congratulations! You are alive! Just keep practicing ; )

2) Setting aside 10 minutes each day to play an instrument is, essentially, another form of meditation and incredibly soothing to my body, mind, and soul. It feels like getting a brain massage every night after the kids go to sleep. And it usually turns into more than 10 minutes.

3) Turning my attention away from electronic devices by 9 pm each night has been difficult to stick to, but I notice that my life feels much, much better if I adhere to this practice. Not sure what to do after 9? [Insert joke about sex here]. I use my time after nine to read, play music, fill notebooks, have conversation with my husband (remember conversation?), organize stuff, or, if all of those just feel like too much effort, I just go to sleep. I use my phone for guided meditations, so I have started a meditation on my phone after 9 pm and still given myself credit (because I make my own rules!).

4) I am still struggling with wake times but am hoping to make a big push in this area when the clocks change. I am also hoping that the next phase of the program will help with waking. And I notice that screens off after 9 makes a big difference with the ease of waking also.

After completing Basic Training, our next stage is going to be focused on energy. Just so you have some concept of what I have in mind for The Jenny Goodguts Super-ish Hero Training Program the components will be some versions of:

Basic Training

Module 1: Bad Guys 101 – Loop-o

Module 2: Allies/Good Guys

Module 3: Lair/Hideout

Module 4: Secret Weapons

Module 5: Super Powers

In Module 1 we will slightly modify the spreadsheet, but we will keep paying daily attention to most of the Basic Training activities and add some new tasks to specifically look at energy drains and try to plug some energy leaks.

If you haven’t yet started Basic Training, the spreadsheet and explanation are available here.

Module 1 should be ready to launch next week (I hope!). If you have finished Basic Training, print your spreadsheet again and keep going on your Basic Training activities until Module 1 is ready.

My Song

I wanted to give you an update on what’s up with the song I wrote last week.

I know what I am about to report is small beans in the world of the Internet and Facebook. But it is big beans for me. So, as of this morning, my song has at least been ‘seen’ by 489 unique visitors – that’s definitely the most of any song I’ve ever written. I’ve had 2,796 page views this month, which is not my ‘biggest’ month, but it is a pretty big turn out for me. It is a bit dangerous to look at statistics like these because they have the tendency to make you want to make the numbers bigger. I don’t know if wanting bigger numbers is nature or nurture, but it definitely feels exciting to see numbers getting bigger (unless you are looking at a scale or the price of home renovations, for example).

So it seems like I’ve written a song that not only I like but some other people do too. I’m thinking about a way to record it so that I (and anyone else who wants to) can have the song as a music file instead of having to listen from the website each time. Will let you know when I figure it out. I have some other songs I’ve been working on. They are not all in the same vein as this song. I will share some of them. They are almost ready.

 

I wrote a song

I wrote a song

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

(Updated: 6/9/2019)

I was sick yesterday and I recorded myself singing a song that I was writing. I wanted to share it with my family, but since I was sick I thought maybe I’d wait and try again later.

However: I live very close to the Pentagon and around 10 AM in the morning, right after I had recorded the song, some kind of very loud jet plane flew over my house. Not uncommon at all. But as it was flying over and the noise was getting louder and louder and closer and closer, I thought: I would really like to share that song right now, just in case. I’d like them to have it. I’d like it to exist somewhere other than on my phone. So I sent the recording (recorded in my voice memo app) to my parents and my brother and sis via text message.

And then my mom called and, because she’s my mom, told me it was great. So I decided to share on the blog too. And here it is. I wrote a first draft of this song (lyrics only) last Wednesday night and then my kids got sick. And then I got sick. I put music to the words yesterday, revised last night, and recorded it on my phone this morning.

The original recorded version is here and a more recent version (slightly improved though still recorded on the phone voice memo app) is included below (click on the arrow to play).

How to make any decision

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I’m at loose ends. Again. Or still—I can’t tell if it comes and goes or is more of a perpetual state.

This week I thought about applying for a job. Or rather, I met with someone who had an open full-time position for which I am highly qualified. I spoke with her about the responsibilities, the possibilities, the vision. What were they hoping to accomplish? How?

I didn’t know what to do. The job would have me working with a bunch of smart people who care about issues I care about. Working to shift global systems. For instance, if one of the most important ways humanity can address climate change is to make sure that no more primary forests are cut down, this position would work with governments in developed and developing countries, major businesses (like huge oil companies), other NGOs, movie stars, world renowned academics, politicians (you get the picture), to figure out how can this happen? And then work with all the partners to get it to happen (and then throw a major party if it ever did happen).

I drove home. What am I going to do? I think keeping primary forests standing is super important. I love forests. They smell GREAT. I am scared about climate change. I am not a fan of multiple, massive hurricanes, I (in theory though I have never been scuba diving) love coral. I would rather there continue to be massive glaciers and ice sheets than the converse.

This is an issue I care about. This is a job I can do. People have to go to war sometimes and it isn’t like they want to go, but they have to because the times call for it.

Wait, what?

I said, people have to go to war sometimes….

You can’t just fancy about, doing things that bring you joy. Sometimes you have to go sit in work clothes, spend hours, years, in very cold meeting rooms, sending lots of important emails, flying in airplanes to more meetings, writing reports, playing politics. Sometimes you have to do these things to make change. To save the world.

So, like I said, I drove home. How am I going to make this decision? I care about the world. I want to help. I sat down at the piano. I played some very elementary pieces, slowly, quietly. I felt the keys with my fingers. I heard two notes, or three notes, blending. My feet gently kept the rhythm.

I turned on some show tunes (Barbra Streisand “On a Clear Day” to be precise). I belted out some Barbra—about four songs worth. I haven’t done that in about six months. I pretended I was on stage performing.

I meditated. A tool I did not have in my toolbox before beginning Basic Training. I did a fifteen-minute Deepak Chopra guided meditation on intention that I found on YouTube. At the end he said: I place my intention in the vast ocean of possibility and allow the universe to work through me. He said it three times, so I remembered it, and wrote it down afterwards.

And I knew this job was not for me.

I have been thinking about my 11th grade history teacher. She subscribes to this blog, which is both an honor and a source of some anxiety. What will she think? Will she approve? Since you probably don’t know my father’s middle name, I will go ahead and let you in on the secret that she is the answer to the frequently asked security question: Name of your favorite teacher. Though I can never remember whether I put in just the last name or the full name—I try to be consistent with capitalization but I’m never totally sure.

I have been thinking about her because I have been thinking about impact. About one lifetime and choices we make. About the scale of what we try to do.

I was brushing my teeth earlier this week and I was thinking about wanting to say thank you. I don’t know if she changed my life. I do know this: She taught me how to really work (academically, that is). She expected me to work. If this is easy, then keep working until you find what is not easy. I think, of all the teachers I was blessed to have, she taught me to examine, to think, to organize thought (she and Chauncey Loomis). She was the best writing teacher I ever had. And she loved me.

She was tough. And she loved me.

One teacher in one school in one town in one country teaching one subject. Thirty years later I am brushing my teeth and sending a silent thank you to the universe for her effort, her attention, her devotion, her love. For the difference she made in one life. For the love that she poured into one small, open heart.

She did not sit around with heads of state talking about forests. She came and watched me sing Barbra Streisand in the Samford University auditorium when I competed in the Junior Miss Pageant. She laughed when we gave her a box of Depends Undergarments as a 40th birthday present. She reads my blog.

I am glad that there are people who ask big questions and who sit in meeting rooms together trying to figure out how to move the big levers to take care of our beautiful world. I send prayers out to the universe for their success. I edit their (copious) documents and reports sometimes. It is a small thing, but it is a thing.

I will keep writing. And singing. And editing. And selling cosmetics. I will plant flowers for my butterflies and birds. I will post smoothie recipes on my blog. I will make up games and missions for myself and my friends.

And I will gently and carefully put my intention in the vast ocean of possibility and allow the universe to work through me.

Basic Training: week 1 update

Posted on by Jennifer Hole
Basic Training week one progress

One week into Basic Training and here is my report:

Waking up at 6:30 is (I think) helping me fall asleep more easily and makes the morning much smoother. The problem is, if I stay in bed until 7 the kids do too but if I wake up, they generally also wake up (we are in close, squeaky quarters). So getting up early isn’t buying me extra child-free time to, say, meditate. And they are exhausted so I’d prefer they get the extra sleep as we transition back to school.  I think the solution is push my wake up time earlier (6:00, which is the eventual goal) but I’m not quite ready to rip that band-aid off just yet, we build to that. I feel good about the progress made so far, even though I have missed 6:30 for the past three days in a row (but only by 15 minutes).

Meditation. I’ve discovered that, as a beginner, I need the house to be empty to meditate. If I wait until after the kids are asleep, my other half will be running water, tapping at a keyboard, breathing, and I just can’t still my mind in the face of this. It is great practice, but we build to that. I’m enjoying Headspace (I am still in the free trial) but I remember doing one Deepak Chopra guided meditation over the summer where you have a mantra that you keep repeating in your mind and I actually felt a change in my body, like a different frequency, during that meditation. So I will continue with Headspace (very good for learning HOW to practice meditation) and then I will experiment with some reader suggestions (Calm and Insight Timer) and also look for some more mantras to chant. If you start with Headspace, you can almost not fail. You can begin with 3 minutes a day and it does not feel hard. If you have struggled to meditate in the past, I highly recommend giving Headspace a try.

Writing. Crossed this off the list. The first time I sat down to write as a 10-minute task I think I might have cried. I wasn’t sure what the point was, or how writing for 10 minutes was supposed to connect me to my soul — was I soul searching or ?? So I want to develop a more structured writing practice, but it is no longer one of my Basic Training tasks. And that’s the great thing about Basic Training — Fully adaptable to YOU and to what is working and what isn’t. Loving it. I still track days that I write, just out of interest.

Smoothie. Every morning. One of the most fundamental changes (practice-wise) that I have made in my life over the past two years and I honestly believe starting the day with a green smoothie has set the foundation for many other positive changes. Worth trying if you haven’t yet! I will post a recipe, but right now I just throw things in in approximate quantities.

Fermented foods. My doctor prescribed fermented foods to me when it was found that I have a depauperate gut flora. She said two tablespoons twice a day. I have found this simple to implement and a good way of getting an extra serving of veggies (sauerkraut). Do I occasionally recoil at the thought of my daily kraut, maybe. But gut bugs are good for your skin, good for your brain, good for your digestion, good for your mood. So I measure out my tablespoons and do my best to chew slowly and mindfully. Yum.

Outside time. I don’t know what to say about this one. Or there is so much to say that it can’t fit in a tiny update paragraph. Outside is my church and where I can feel closest to God (or the Universe), where I feel especially connected to something bigger than me. My body was made to spend most of its time outside, smelling the smells in a forest, feeling sunshine and wind. I have felt most alive in my life during the periods of time when I have lived exclusively outside, bug bites, camp food, dirty clothes, hand-washed underpants, and all. But my 10-minute task, while making sure I at least expose my body to the elements for a brief span each day, doesn’t quite help me connect to those feelings. Sometimes 10 minutes turns into an hour, and once this week I took a walk on a boardwalk through a wetland and saw two tortoises locked in conjugal embrace (“Mom, are they fighting? or hugging?”). I smelled the smell and felt that life is good and beautiful. So I’m keeping up the practice, but needing to refine it in some way.

Dancing turns out to be my toughest challenge (well, movement in general as I have yet to attend an exercise class). Here’s what I’ve found with the three days I actually danced during the week: the first couple of times were fun, I listened to the music and kept the children from climbing on me like a jungle gym. The third time, my body remembered how much pleasure it can be to move. I guess what I’m saying is that the first two times my mind had a nice time and by the third time my body remembered what it felt like to be awake.  I missed my friend Sarah. I thought of all the dancing we did. I thought about planning a Dance-a-thon.

Playing an instrument. I remember more each day and it gets easier and more fun. This is pure joy for me and 10 minutes is achievable.

Screens off at 9 has been a positive change. I definitely think it has helped me sleep better because the one night I stayed on until around 10 I had a much worse night of sleep — i just didn’t wake up feeling refreshed. Yes, there could have been other factors. But for me less screen = more happier.

Exercise class. I just need to sign up for a class and put it in my calendar! I have struggled with this for my entire adult life. I love yoga and would love to take a dance class too. I think it is making the commitment to a particular time that feels so daunting. What if something? So I need to just do it. Like right now. This minute.

Ok, I did it. It took about 15 minutes because I had to read the class descriptions and decide whether to pay for a walk-in class or commit to the intro pack of four classes for  $10 each (I committed). I’m doing gentle yoga rather than hot yoga or anything called bootcamp. I’ll try that out and then schedule the next. I did see they are having a yoga nidra workshop early next month so I will think about signing up for that because I’m interested.

So that’s my update. Overall I love my checklist and feel that it is a very positive presence in each day. It is just a tiny extra nudge from a good friend to do things that nurture me and build some healthy practices into each day.

If you’ve decided to try Basic Training, I’d love to hear how it is working for you in the comments!

Smoothie recipes and an update on alternative energy for your home coming soon. Also, of course, the constantly mentioned “Do More Good” Jenny Goodguts principle explained. Happy Friday!

How to find your life purpose

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

My kids are back to school. Both of them there for seven hours each day. Four-year-old Sam, who weighs so very much when hanging off my neck as if I were a tree, wearing his too-big backpack, his little legs moving quickly to keep up with his big sis, to grow up and learn the ways of the world.

For the first time in over six years, I have a day at home, alone, with no sounds but some cicadas, a few unidentified birds, my A/C (it just cut on), the helicopters flying towards the Pentagon, a neighbor’s yard service, and the sound of acorns falling from the massive oak trees overhead, plummeting to the ground. They want to be the massive oaks of one hundred years from now, but most of them will be raked up, an inconvenience for the manicured lawns and yards, sent away with the leaves to be made into mulch for tidy gardens in the spring. Sitting outside (for my 10 minutes of sunshine a day), I hope none of them hit me square on the head. I try to remember physics: I know the mass of an acorn is small, and force = mass x velocity? I’m not sure that’s right. But they have that sharp little point at the end. I consider getting a hat or helmet. I decide to risk it.

Elsewhere, the world is on fire. The world is under water. But here it is blue-skied and mild. Elsewhere people with very slightly different DNA to mine, DNA that dictates that their skin has slightly more melanin, people whose ancestors primarily lived in South America, Africa, Asia, human beings whose kids have also just started school, they struggle with different fears, and then again probably a lot of the same fears, as me.

I am lost. I don’t know what to do with myself. I have financial obligations, and once the obligations are met, I have a wish list. The uncomfortable sofa. I feel guilty wanting a comfortable sofa. I think about the people with the different DNA, mothers and fathers with different circumstances. I think about the families I lived with in India who have no sofa.

But I had friends to my house yesterday and didn’t ask them to sit on the sofa. They weren’t my best friends, who know to get a pillow to prop you up and then it is okay. So we sat at the table and had a nice time. If I earned a bunch of money, I could have a different sofa, maybe I would ask more people over. Maybe I would feel different.

I used to travel to places like Rio, and Kyoto, and Poznan (no offense Poland, but that was not as exciting as some of the other trips). I got to sit in meetings in beautiful places all over the world with people who eventually became my friends because I didn’t spend time with any other people at times when I had energy (and I still love many of them, don’t get me wrong). Back then, people asked me what I did and I told them “I’m important” (paraphrase). “This company and this title validates that I’m something.”

Someone assigned me something to do. I did it. Then they said my name during a meeting with more people and mentioned that I was very useful. I blushed. That moment was over and I remembered the hundreds of hours of my life I had traded for it. Sometimes it felt worth it. Usually it felt a little bit less worth it than I thought it would.

Once I sat across a table from Harrison Ford and explained to him what my team was hoping to accomplish to save the world. He nodded. Once I drank tea with the Queen of Bhutan. We took a photo together. Once I sat with a group of older men in a West African village and explained why a group of people (mostly other older men, with very slightly different DNA from the villagers) were going to look at insects and birds in their forest. They nodded. But one of them said “This is why we should send our daughters to school.” That moment felt worth it. Another time, I cried in a hotel because I was scared to sleep in a tent in the middle of Africa for a month. My friends were comfortable on mattresses on another continent, they were not listening to convoys of Liberian militants drive by them as they slept.

And here I am now. No fancy job. No fancy title. No paycheck. Two kids whose little legs will get longer and longer until they are long enough to carry them to Africa, or Poland. I will be here to help those legs get longer and stronger and to hopefully point them in a good direction. But they will have less and less need for me.

So what will fill these long days? I think my sister thinks I should get another job. I think that because when I was telling her that I wanted to clear yet more of the clutter out of my house she said something like “Maybe it isn’t the clutter that is bothering you. Maybe it is that you need to get out of your house and maybe get another job” (paraphrase). I think what her loving, beautiful heart was saying was that she thinks I need something to do. Some structured something that I apply my mind towards.

So, I decided to start selling cosmetics and skin care. The clear solution to this dilemma.

I have to back up here, to when I was about four years old. Or maybe five. You start kindergarten. Someone tells you where to sit and what the rules are. And when you sit where they told you, and you demonstrate that you are willing and excited to follow the rules, they give you a certificate. I know this because I have at least 300 such certificates in my basement at this very moment. Little photocopied slips of paper—and when you do something they want you to do, they take out one of these little slips and put a star on it and your heart soars just a tiny bit and you take it home and your mom puts it in a box and saves it for you until you are 40.

I was very good at collecting certificates. My “personality type” (according to a test I took over the weekend at the recommendation of the beauty products company that I represent) is to be a “Helper.” When I carefully read the report about my type it explains that as a Type 2 (Helper) I believe that “I must be helpful and caring to survive.” Not, I enjoy being helpful, I feel value when I am helpful. To survive.

I’m pretty sure that selling cosmetics is not my purpose. There are some clear benefits to doing this at this point in time, and perhaps I will explain it in the future and perhaps I will just know that I have my reasons and be okay with that.

That said, I know there is other work for me to do. Work that I want to do. But I just can’t quite figure out exactly what it is. So at night, after a day of selling cosmetics, after feeding the kids and washing the dishes, I spend my screen-free time soul searching.

To more precisely locate and connect with my “soul,” I am reading a book called The Firestarter Sessions and it is about 20 different “sessions” where you think about your strengths, interests, allies (I can’t give you the full list, I’m still on the first session).

To be honest, I’m a bit stuck on session 1. There is a list of questions to think about and answer and I don’t know the answers.

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?

What I mostly remember is listening to the radio, to Casey Kasem’s top 40, to making up stories when no one was around, to dancing with my mom to Diana Ross and the Supremes, to watching rain fall off the roof with my brother and watching the pine bark floating, to making mud pies (more specifically, they were beignets), to my giant-sized map of Disney’s Magic Kingdom. I remember liking to play dress up, but that may not be as separate from the world’s influence on me as all the others.

I’m not sure how those memories point me in a direction.

What activities cause you to feel useful, vital, better than before?

I’m a Helper, so I can’t really focus on useful. It makes me feel useful to clean the toilet or to do whatever somebody asks me to do. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for.

So vital.

Singing.

Making a bouquet of flowers.

Dancing.

Reading? 

Organizing stuff?

I love to organize stuff. But that might just be self preservation in this overstuffed world.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I know that there are dishes when I wake up and more dishes when I go to sleep (duh, if you leave dishes when you go to sleep, they are going to be there when you wake up. That’s a lesson we all learned in Frog and Toad). I know there is dust on most everything and I haven’t changed the sheets in too long. I know there are dirty rivers and plastic in the ocean. I know there is a scourge of dehumanization in the ether and it needs fixing. I know the atmosphere cannot manage all of this extra heat energy in a way that is acceptable for human life. 

I like to sing. My body feels good when I am making music. When I am moving.

I have financial obligations. And I would love a new sofa. 

My kids just started school. I am selling cosmetics.

And I don’t know who I am apart from all of the certificates. 

I like frogs. The tiny little tree frogs.

Now I’m going to go pick up my children and hug them as tight as they will let me. Except that they will probably be annoying the whole way home so maybe I’ll just threaten to send them to their rooms.

I can hear the cicadas. The wind is blowing. I’m alive. I’m confused. I’m okay.

Basic Training — Or, a spreadsheet to change your life

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Hello my friends!

After an unplanned and too long hiatus, I am dipping my toe back into the waters of oversharing and underdelivering to provide you with an outline of the long promised, never before explained Jenny Goodguts Basic Training Program (take 1).

I still have not explained my experiments in Doing More Good (rather than doing less bad) but, As God is my Witness, that is coming soon. I want to go ahead and share Basic Training (take 1) because using this kind of spreadsheet has changed my life. My life then reverted back to how it was before, somewhat, but I’m trusting that reinstituting the spreadsheet will once again change my life.

And don’t take it from me, I have one reverberating testimonial:

“Thanks for telling me about your spreadsheet. I made one too. It was really helpful” (paraphrase)
— Angie

The mechanics of the spreadsheet:

It is a printed piece of paper. There are a number of small daily actions listed. They are slotted into a timezone (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc). The sheet is taped to the wall in my kitchen. At the assigned time of day, I look at the sheet and try to make sure all relevant tasks are complete.

Originally, this spreadsheet was mostly used to help me remember to take certain supplements, breathe before eating, consume cultured foods (more on this later) so it was a perfect system for those tasks. I (almost) didn’t miss checking a box for 8 weeks, and that is REALLY saying something for me.

The tasks in Basic Training don’t fit as easily into the original time slots, and are not quite as simple to complete, so I am experimenting with a new spreadsheet and will modify (Jenny Goodguts Basic Training Program, take 2) once I see how these different types of activities work within this system. Instead of waiting until it is perfect, I’m sharing as I go.

What does Basic Training include?

Basic Training lasts 4 weeks.

It focuses on preparing the individual to be stronger, healthier, and more resilient so that we can get to the superhero stuff down the road.

It follows the Jenny Goodguts principle: Do More Good. In a nutshell that means it does not focus on things you should not do or on what you might be doing that is ‘bad’ for you. It focuses on adding more good things to your life, on ways to spend time and energy that will support your vision of what you want to be instead of focusing on what you don’t want to be.

Basic Training is something that can be completely modified for any individual. I’m sharing the actions that are part of my own spreadsheet as an example but feel free to adjust in any way you like! I will provide more guidance on how Basic Training can be modified in the future, but I’m in desperate need of it myself, as well as of some accountability, which public blogging provides, so I’m rolling it out barebones to start with.

Basic Training includes five aspects:

1) Nutrition/Energy
2) Movement/Strength
3) Clarity
4) Spirit/Soul
5) Rest/Restoration

For my purposes,
Spirit = What is bigger than me?
Soul = What am I?

EAT MORE SUNSHINE: Drink a green smoothie every day (my basic recipe forthcoming but you can check out Simple Green Smoothies for good ideas).
 
GOOD GUTS: Eat 2 Tablespoons of cultured food, 2 times a day (kefir, sauerkraut, Kombucha are my current sources, sometimes pickles but you have to read labels).
 
MOVE: Dance to 3 songs every day.
 
MOVE: Attend 1 exercise class every week.
 
CLARITY: Meditate for 10 minutes each day. I’m going to try Headspace but am actively seeking recommendations!
 
SPIRIT: Spend 10 minutes outside every day.
 
SOUL: Play a musical instrument for 10 minutes every day.
 
SOUL: Write for 10 minutes every day.
 
REST: Out of bed by 6:30 am every weekday.
 
RESTORE: Enjoy screen-free activities after 9 PM. 
 
I will print my checklist today and start tomorrow. My rules are that I can get the tasks done at any time during the day, the timezones are just useful guidelines of when something might fit. I predict that rest/restore will be the most consistently challenging element, but making time to play music will be a close second.
 
In the comments on the blog, I would love to know if you have any favorite songs to dance to (with a happy vibe). I pulled out my old 45s over the weekend and danced to Vienna Calling by Falco. You probably have no idea what I am talking about, but it was pretty amazing to be transported back to 1985. I could almost remember feeling 10 years old again. I’m also looking for suggestions about guided meditations. If you have any that you love, please share!

 

Basic Training Spreadsheet Is Here!

I may be right, I may be crazy

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Me: They might not like it.
Me: If they don’t like it, they can unsubscribe.

Me: But I personally know every subscriber, maybe they don’t want to hurt my feelings.
Me: People keep reading it. They could just let it go to their inboxes and never open the message. But they don’t.

Me: Maybe they are worried about me and they read to make sure I am okay. I don’t want to write things that will make people feel down.
Me: But you also don’t want to write things that are not real, and sometimes real is down. Or at least real is not always falsely positive and upbeat.

Me: Isn’t it a little self centered to write so much about myself? My own thoughts, my own experience, how I feel about every little thing?
Me: Maybe being real can help people feel less alone. So much of what you see on TV, online, in magazines doesn’t seem like your life at all, or doesn’t reflect what really matters to you. Writing what is real for you has helped you. Maybe it helps other people too.

Me: So is that the plan then, publish an online diary?
Me: Ideally no, that wasn’t the plan. And it isn’t the plan. But you are being transparent. You had an idea, you started something, it is evolving and that takes time. And you are keeping people (who love you and are supportive of you) informed and involved as you learn and develop.

Me: I’m afraid that if I just keep writing whatever pops into my head once a week that…
Me: That…?

Me: You know I’m a people pleaser.
Me: Yes.

Me: I’m not sure that blogging is the right outlet for me. When I read my own posts on my phone I wish I were sitting down in a comfy chair with the words printed out, instead of rushing to read it quickly on a tiny screen.
Me: You changed the subject.

Me: I don’t know what I’m afraid of. Can we move on?
Me: You like to blog. You are a people pleaser. You love these people and you want to do something that is helpful, is honest, is enjoyable on both sides, doesn’t make anyone feel upset, keeps everyone happy. All you can do is be real. And try to be healthy. And share what you are learning. You can’t keep everyone happy. And if you try to you won’t be able to write what is inside you.

Me: Maybe it is arrogant to think it matters—what is inside you.
Me (singing softly):
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine

Me (even softer):
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine (a little choked up).
That was a low blow.
Me: What else are you going to do? Play iPad games, eat Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups, and binge-read the news?

Me: I could get a job cleaning up a river. Someone could tell me to do something and I could do it. I could do a good job. They would tell me I was doing a good job. Sometimes.
Me: And your music?

Me: I could do that sometime. Some other time.
Me: And your light?

Me: I care about rivers.
Me: And your light?

Me:
Me: Your little light?

Me: Maybe I can’t do it.
Me: Maybe you can.

Me (in such a quiet whisper, maybe no one will hear):
i hope i can

Make money and gain new skills to live your extraordinary life!!, This post is not about how to

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Scraps of paper, loosely arranged in stacks, rest on my bedside table, on the highest shelf in my office/guest room/kids playroom/occasional restaurant, in multiple file folders of different names (jenny goodguts, b-school, writing, ideas, projects). Then there are the notebooks which are 80% drawings by my daughter who must fill any blank sheet, these days mostly with pictures featuring a couple kissing, their lips grotesquely puckered to enable them to fill the available space between the two figures. Some of those lips are as long as arms. There is a picture of me sitting at a piano (one of my favorites) and one of her and me, smiling, with musical notes all around. I keep them all, of course, but these two are my treasures. The other 20% of these notebooks are filled with ideas or drafts that I start while sitting in bed reading or, possibly more commonly, directly after showering.

If I ever have good ideas, and who is to say, they mostly come to me while I’m showering. It is occurring to me at just this moment that showering is the one occasion during the week (as this is certainly no longer a daily occurrence in my life) when I am somewhat relaxed and there are, for brief spans of time though certainly not for the full duration of any shower, no children, spouse, mother with their own needs breaking into my thoughts. There are no piles of mail to open, no computer to check, no phone to beep. Just me and some hot water and whatever is running through my mind. So at least half of the time when I get out of the shower I have to immediately find the nearest available paper so I don’t lose track of whatever “genius” idea I have just had. These notes are either haphazardly arranged within the treasured steno/doodlepads or stacked somewhere for a time when I have the bandwidth to use them for their still undetermined purpose.

I mention this because I had written a draft for a post that I was excited about and it is in one of these stacks and now I am visiting my parents. So I cannot electrify you with the majesty of my premeditated and brilliant thoughts of several weeks ago. What I can do, in the few moments I have before my children and my two nieces, with my assistance, turn my mother’s kitchen into a Mexican restaurant (complete with adult and kids menus for the littlest ones that includes a hand-drawn coloring page) is to jot down a few thoughts I had several weeks ago after listening to a webinar about how to grow your blog audience. (In case you were wondering, yes, of course there will be the requisite “show” where the girls and Sam dance in more suggestive ways than I feel comfortable with to Desposito but C’est la vie (except in Spanish).)

Why write about my recent revelation regarding blogging success (I am asking myself?) — because I want you to understand why in the future all of my blog post titles will be significantly different from how they started out. Let’s look at my past choices: Not holding out for a hero, Paris or Pittsburgh, Why did I start a blog, Remembering to breathe, The happy atmosphere challenge, smalltalk (etc). I’m doing it all wrong.

From now on, I am advised, my title is the most important single thing that I can write. Because without a good title, no one will be interested, I will catch no fish. I can grow my blog empire exponentially by tweaking my titles. So henceforth, I must tell you exactly what you can expect to receive by taking the time to read. Be forewarned.

Next item of business. The blog turns three months old in a couple of weeks. It still doesn’t know what it wants to be, but I love it anyway and I appreciate your reading and your comments and your support! Basic training, which was meant to start in June, will begin on August 26, or something like that and I plan to explain basic training on August 19.

I still have not told you about some of my organizing principles (most of, I guess) but those are to come shortly.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a bit more from my beloved E.B. (White):

“The sound of the sea is the most time-effacing sound there is. The centuries reroll in a cloud and the earth becomes young again when you listen, with eyes shut, to the sea — a young green time when the water and the land were just getting acquainted and had known each other for only a few billion years and the mollusks were just beginning to dip and creep in the shallows; and now man the invertebrate, under his ribbed umbrella, anoints himself with oil and pulls on his Polariod glasses to stop the glare and stretches out his long brown body at ease upon a towel on the warm sand and listens.

The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering and the prognostications and the turmoil, the disagreements and the fateful decisions and agreements and the plans and the programs and the threats and the counter threats, then you close your eyes and the sea dispatches one more big roller in the unbroken line since the beginning of the world and it combs and breaks and returns foaming and saying: “So soon?”

I am on my way to visit with the ocean soon and look forward to asking her my questions and listening for her answer.