“The Dog” Journal
Welcome to the Dog Journal, a blog where I periodically share my best finds for taming those puppies that gnaw at your planner.
Could be a quick time management tip, a smell-the-flowers moment, a comment overheard on the elevator. Whatever the inspiration, I hope you’ll blog right along with me by commenting and sharing your tips and stories for taming an overbooked life.
Rightsizing Comeuppance
I hate to admit it after beating the rightsizing drum. But the most essential wardrobe item on my recent trip to Santa Fe, NM, was a bright salmon microfiber shirt I’d tried to push on my friend Nancy a few months before in the name of rightsizing.
“It will look GREAT on you,” I insisted, “and I will never wear it again.” It had been hanging in my closet unworn since a trip to Costa Rica in 2017, and seemed to check all the boxes for repurposing. I hadn’t worn it for SIX years. I didn’t intend to revisit Costa Rica. I’d rebuffed opportunities for other sunny climes, such as Africa. And the long flappy shirt looked ridiculous for other domestic travel, aka the grocery store.
Months after Nancy politely rejected it, I threw it in my suitcase as a last-minute “layer.” And wore it four out of six days. How could this happen to someone who’s supposed the understand rightsizing? The truth is, I’d become a “just-in-case” packer.
The jacket was just in case the forecast was correct, and the daytime temperature in New Mexico was pushing 90. But what about evenings? The desert is unpredictable. What if it snowed? Rained? What if we were suddenly struck by a wind storm?
By the time I’d just-in-cased the possibilities, I had packed two vests (fleece and quilted), a packable rain jacket, a knit jacket for the plane, a light windbreaker and a hoodie and (after reading a random article about desert snow storms), and a packable winter jacket with a cap.
In one humbling trip, I encountered the rightsizer’s dilemma. Next time I say “just in case,” should I picture the bright salmon shirt? Or those seven other jackets? At least I can brag that they rode back home in the otherwise empty packable duffel I packed “just in case” I bought souvenirs. Which I did not. Except a few small ones.
Change in a Garden
There’s nothing like a garden to help us build the “change” muscle. I pulled out the garden map the sellers gave me when I bought the house four years ago, and so much was different.
Several “beauties” of their era, including an autumn clematis and a climbing hydrangea, had died. I had taken down a service berry tree that had outgrown its spot and given giant hostas a green light to get even larger. The false indigo, once at the edge of a bed, was now hiding under the growing branches of an Alaskan cedar.
Gone was the prairie grass that had taken over the back bed and in its place was a flowering cherry and a stand of shasta daisies. Gone was the perennial ground cover that was a pain to cut back and in its place were some coleus. Next week, say goodbye to the invasive English ivy, which has had the audacity to creep through the walls of porch, garage and basement.
Through it all, only the little statue of Buddha remains placid and unflinching – a reminder that change is inevitable and sometimes even an improvement.
Learning from Jars
I’ve had an aha!
It’s only a small leap from finding enough time to do it all – a lifelong challenge for me – to finding creative ways to rightsize my stuff! No wonder I’m intrigued with rightsizing!
I’ve always loved the metaphor Stephen Covey offers (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) on doing the big things first. You know the one. Put the big rocks in the jar first, then fit the pebbles and sand around them.
I was gob-smacked yesterday by another jar story – this one from a meditation in Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. This one, called “You Can’t Always (Be) Get(ting) What You Want,” played off wisdom from the Stoic phiosopher Epictetus. He’d observed that children get their hands stuck in narrow goody jars when they grab too many treats at once. To get unstuck, they needed to let go of a few.
It seems I have a lot to learn from jars. Let go of doing too much, holding on to too much! Time and space aren’t so different.
Newsletter Techni-Venture
I’m happy to report that the February newsletter, Unpacking Your Stories, finally went out this week – while it was still February! The newsletter folks, MailerLite, announced that the domain name had to be “authenticated” before anything could set sail. It sounded simple enough, but anything involving coding is complicated for me. Miraculously, I was able singlehandedly to get some code from MailerLite, but figuring out where and how to insert it – at GoDaddy or Hostgator – was beyond me.
I wisely turned the task over to my web person, Ellie Nowels of Centipede Graphics, who began a weeks-long email exchange with MailerLite, involving screenshots of code that weren’t being accepted. Finally – ta-dah! – the code went in and MailerLite declared me “authenticated.” Then, just before I hit “send,” I remembered that I was supposed to have added an additional “quick link” to my new book.
I couldn’t figure out how. But thanks to a Fiverr contractor named Kisilda in Albania, the new link made it into the newsletter, and it finally sailed out to subscribers. If you’re not one and would like to take a look, here ‘tis. Whew!!! It’s a very special issue since it contains the first story written by one of my Unpacking Your Life workshop participants, Cindy May. Just hit subscribe on this web page, and future issues of my now-authenticated newsletter will appear in your inbox each month. Whew!!
Technology requires A LOT of assistance. But now on to the part I like best: not technology but stories!!
