Transplanting a Seattleite

I’m really starting to get a sense of the kind of cranky old bitch I’m going to become more and more over the coming decades.

I’m trying to be okay with this.

Here’s something to cheer you up:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/this-rare-11th-century-islamic-astrolabe-is-one-of-the-oldest-yet-discovered/

Super cool astrolabe whose successive owners modded it to better serve their purposes, presenting us with an artifact that sharply conveys its cultural context over time.

From _Decluttering at the Speed of Life_:

[There are 2 decluttering questions. If I needed this, where would I look for it. If you can’t answer it, then you ask the second one: would it even occur to me that I already had one.]

“In the kitchen, question #2 isn’t always a matter of whether I would go out and buy the item; it’s a matter of whether my natural inclination would be to make do with another kitchen tool that has lots of different uses and works perfectly fine for this job too.”

Her example is a garlic press, and her observation is that she would never use it, she’s smash the garlic with the side of a knife. I obviously agree with part a of this, and don’t do part b of this — I’d mince it _with_ the knife.

More importantly, however, I _really_ objected to “make do with another kitchen tool that has lots of different uses and works perfectly fine for this job too” comment, when I read this book previously (I have no idea if I blogged about that at the time or not, and I’m not going to look right now). I am inclined to believe that my kitchen project of Find All the Things and Try Them Out and Decide What They Are Good For and Whether I Like Them derives almost directly from Not Liking This Particular Observation.

In clothing, in the kitchen, and in a variety of other areas, I have _rebought_ things that I got rid of and then _re-got rid of them again_, because I didn’t keep them around and use them enough to understand what exactly it was I hated about them enough to Want Them Gone. I never did this with people — which in retrospect is hilariously weird and strange. I’ve never been the person to break up with someone, get back together with them, re-break up with them. But I will do it with Stuff. And understanding in enough detail what I object to about a thing is crucial to disrupting that cycle.

The book continues to be really great, even tho I am, as always, not the target audience. This book, like the previous reread, comes from the pivot year(s) when decluttering books stopped being All About Decluttering, and became weird hybrids of Self-Help and Decluttering (now we have fully evolved to being all about the self-help part).

ETA:

There’s this absolutely amazing section about “Repurposing”. “Or are you a wanna-be repurposer? … I collected stuff like I was the world’s greatest reuser of all things that looked like trash to the untrained eye. … I love the side of me that see the world differently … but I have to reconcile her with the other side of me … Trash with possibilities, but still trash. And then I despise Creative Me. The number one way I’ve found to keep this precarious balance in check is to declutter.”

I read this, and I _don’t_ relate to this. Because while she at least claims that both of these are her (I’m inclined to believe her), I’m stuck with the fact that the would-be repurposer is NOT me. And so the stuff builds up because somebody else thinks it Could Be Useful. On the one hand, I’m prepared to let other people I live with be themselves and make their own decisions. On the other hand, we also have to share all the space in the kitchen.

But again, maybe we _don’t_ have to share all the space in the kitchen. Maybe I could do something like, sure, you can keep that … just not in the kitchen. You can keep that in a bin on the shelving, all of which was also purchased by him. Hmmmm.

I say all this like I have some agency, but really it’s driven by being completely intolerant of watching someone else root around in the trash to take stuff out of the trash and store it in the kitchen because It Could Be Useful. _That_ I find unbearable. But there is a basement.

ETAYA:

In the closet chapter, she talks about using hate to declutter clothing. Yay! I may well have gotten my strategy (wear things I normally do not wear in order to find out _why_ I do not wear them, and then when I know _why_ I don’t wear them, I won’t make that mistake ever again) from thinking about the implications of You Get Rid of What You Hate.

It got up for sure into the high 80s, and our porch thermometer was 91 at one point. Ugh. It’s only April. It was dry, and I did walk with M., altho I kinda regret it. She volunteers in the morning on Thursday, so we went at 1 pm, and that is NOT a good time for me to be out in the sun.

I took A. out to dinner at 110 Grille and we stopped at Roche Bros on the way home to buy a few things and also fake ice cream. But we were still pretty full from dinner, so it’ll keep in the freezer until we feel a yearning for it.

I had a nice phone call with J.

I have been having all sorts of complicated and difficult to articulate thoughts. I frequently summarize this kind of thinking as, hug the people you love and tell them you love them.

I feel like this needs an addendum tho. If you want or need something from someone else, _tell them_. Ask for it. Negotiate for it. Demand it. Issue an ultimatum. Whatever. Try not to muddy the waters with things that would be “reasonable” to want or need. Relationships do not thrive when one person wants something so badly from the other person or the relationship or whatever that it curdles and ultimately destroys their desire to be in the relationship … and for whatever reason, the other person has absolutely no idea that that desire exists or is that powerful. It may take more than _telling_, altho telling is a plausible start. This won’t change incompatibility; it won’t “fix” things. It’s kinda like compost for a relationship. Gross, underfoot, possibly smelly, and absolutely necessary for anything beautiful and tasty to grow.

I’ve known this for a long time about my own relationships. I’m starting to see much more sharply how generally true this particular observation / bit o’ advice actually is.

I walked over to the school and got A. We had a nice chat as we walked home, then she went upstairs and spent a couple hours in the bathroom and planning her outfit. At that point, I insisted she wrap up the outfit planning and do some homework. I have book group tonight and I wanted the homework done(ish) before that started, as R. will be doing an indoor bike ride overlapping with that so no one would be available if she had issues. Also, she should be winding down for bed at that point. I want to be clear that I did all of this _before_ listening to the Art of Decluttering podcast about anti-goals. And yes, Dear Reader, those were all anti-goals.

I listened to the rest of the Speaking of Psychology podcast about bipolar disorder. It is interesting that 25-30% of kids who look like they are cycling wind up being fine, even without being on medication, in their 20s and 30s, and they don’t really know why.

I tried listening to an Odd Lots with Betsy Cohen recorded on the 11th about SVB, but it didn’t age very well. I gave up in favor of trying a new podcast, The Art of Decluttering. Australian accent! So that’s interesting. It was about anti-goals, which I had never heard of, but which seem to be taking seriously the idea of You Know What You Don’t Want So Plan to Make It Not Happen. This comes under the heading of Tied up in Nots for me, however, apparently the kind of inversion works for some people. There’s a 2017 Medium article that might be an origin point:

https://awilkinson.medium.com/the-power-of-anti-goals-c38f5f46d23c

I wouldn’t call these anti-goals? I would call this boundary setting, learning to say no, making sure you understand the purpose of the unpleasant things you are doing (sometimes we really do have to do unpleasant things but if we don’t know why we are doing them, there is _some_ kind of problem going on). I think, however, that a lot of people attempt to adopt as goals things they don’t actually want, but they think they should want. And then they are not especially motivating. In general, these people are much clearer on what they do NOT want than what they DO want. I guess this is a starting point?

I’m not — this one time! — going to do a lot of links to random blogs and videos and whatever about anti-goals. It’s _really clear_ that a lot of people name goals they don’t really want (!!!) and they describe planning processes that are fundamentally unhinged (figure it all out in detail and then Life Happens).

Meanwhile, a comment on an earlier post pointed at a particularly apropos twitter thread about being motivated by anxiety, not enjoying the anxiety, getting it fixed with meds or whatever then suffering performance declines. Very Clear that people are in fact motivating themselves with anxiety. And once I realized that, I quit trying to fix anxiety and started working on an alternative approach to getting things done (obviously, going to be a streamlined GTD or similar, with 3 goals, one of which is taking care of one’s own basic needs, and one of which is knowing what the next step on the taking care of one’s own basic needs is, leaving an open slot for Whatever Else You Want To Do). As I am nibbling at bits and pieces of that project, it is become so very clear just how great the need for something in this general area really is.

I’ve been thinking and blogging about a variety of ideas and potential writing projects. Yesterday, the thinking hit a point that I rarely get to: get out a big piece of paper and draw something that depicts linkages. It was a really worthwhile exercise that involved shockingly little erasing (I really could have done it in pen) and that was profoundly satisfying. I found a frame and hung it in my office to contemplate for a while.

While that exercise surfaced connections between the things I have been thinking about, what are lines of various sorts on the page are processes in real life. I’m going to list a few of the processes I’ve been engaging with recently (you’ll recognize them!) and then make some observations.

Shop my closet
Cook what I already have
Take the output of one thing and make it the input of another
Identify the next user before acquisition
Identify future uses before creation
Look at the things that you’ve had for a long time, and don’t use
Store where used
Only replace things that you are sure you want to keep using
Repair (of broken things)
Alteration (of things that are not quite right)
Bacon fat
Cooking a whole bird
Gravy
Stale bread
Wear what you don’t like until you know exactly why
Eat what you don’t (like) until you know exactly why

Working backwards from the last two, the general principle of those is that if you have something you really don’t like, and you cannot identify _why_ you don’t like it, you have a very real future acquisition mistake problem. You acquired this thing _for some reason_, and you are getting rid of it _for a different but not identifiable reason_. You could do this forever. Might as well learn how to identify the negative, so you can permanently get off this treadmill.

Eat what you don’t (like) is related, but a little different, because I have had foods around that I actually like, but don’t eat. Sometimes, there were foods I _loved_ and didn’t buy or eat. Then I started buying them and not eating them. I have since learned that if I love a food but don’t buy and/or eat it, it’s probably because I’m allergic to it. But I really should try to nail that down, so that I also don’t order it when I’m at a restaurant, because when I’m looking at a menu with interesting things, I’ll go, oh! I like that, and I never buy that, and I never eat that so I’ll get it here. Bad idea. I don’t need aversion training on eating at restaurants (any more), so even that silver lining has tarnished.

Bread honestly doesn’t stale around here typically, but when it does, I have a really detailed use path. End slices from my daughter’s store bought bread (we’re partway through the conversion to homemade bread — I just am not consistent enough on keeping up) go into the freezer. When they build up, they become bread crumbs, croutons, french toast, panzanella, bread stuffing. Staling is even more rare with homemade bread; generally, that is softened in the microwave with a little water to make steam and consumed before it rehardens. Every two weeks, there is a loaf of Izzy’s, and I’m not sure that has ever made it to stale. I was chatting with my sister recently, who has a long history with keto diets, and she recently has been running her yogurt maker and bread maker, but throwing out loaves of bread that go stale. She had completely forgotten the stale bread use path (actually, she only knew french toast anyway, and either never knew or forgot the microwave trick and didn’t want to hurt herself cutting hard bread, and was thus unable to use the full path with homemade bread).

During the early part of the pandemic lockdown, I wanted some bacon fat for some purpose, and didn’t have a jar going so I scavenged some from the bottom of the pre-cooked bacon container in the fridge. I felt a little weird about it, but after that I researched current nutritionist thinking on bacon fat (they are now fine with it, mostly) and started keeping a jar by the stove again. (The full story here is far more complicated, but I’m not going to get into it.) It turns out that even cooking a lot of vegetables with bacon fat, it is impossible to keep up with the amount generated by _one_ person in the house eating _one_ slice of bacon per day. So, I started trying to figure out what else I could use the bacon fat for, that I was currently using other fats or oils for. I haven’t reached the bacon-fat-on-toast stage (altho that is now visible on the horizon, whereas previously, it had been unimaginable), but I don’t pour oil into a pan hardly ever any more (if I’m cooking for a vegetarian, obviously I will).

When we signed up with Lilac Hedge so we could have things like lamb and bison again (we’d been missing them), I ordered a goose. I had cooked duck before, so I made a plan ahead of time to not have an oven fire AND to keep the goose fat. The goose fat was so amazing, that led to biscuit experimentation and making gravy with goose fat, which was of course, incredible. They sell jars of goose fat. It truly is a magic ingredient.

Like the goose fat got me thinking about pan sauces again, so when I cooked a chicken I made some gravy. The first time post-goose that I did that, it turned out fine, but I didn’t use it up. The second time, it occurred to me to make a vegetable and chicken stew and use the gravy in that (basically, like eating the filling from a shepherd’s pie or chicken pot pie or whatever). Gravy gone.

Roland got out the sewing machine recently to do a few projects that my daughter requested after I suggested them. She has been going through her dresser and creating new outfits every day for the next day. When she runs across something that does not fit, she’ll donate it, and sometimes but not always request a replacement. When she has something that has pilled, she’ll give it to me and I’ll razor off the pills. But recently, she tried some 3/4 length sleeve shirts and absolutely loathed them. She really liked the shirt, but those sleeves. I said, you know, I am pretty sure even I could fix that, but your dad could probably do a neater job. He recently made the alterations (trim, rehem).

When I bought the Lego Titanic (I bought extra letters and labeled it the Olympic. For reasons. But I did not mod the build because I’m lazy), I could immediately see it was going to take over a full table. I didn’t want to lose a table. I knew I’d be buying something to display it on, and I figured that might as well also be useful for other things both while displaying the Olympic AND after the Olympic exited my life to go make some other Brickhead happy. I ordered a sofa table on Etsy with a lower shelf for displaying the boat, leaving the regular surface available for whatever. Which, in the event, is actually more Lego. Also, it’s really nice.

When I bought the Eiffel Tower, I did not check the dimensions, but realized as I was building the base that I had a very real problem. I halted the build, ordered a matching table from the same shop on Etsy, negotiated with my husband to make sure that it had a post-Eiffel Tower use as an end table (he requested a slightly lower height to go with the chair it would be next to). I also identified friends who would accept the Eiffel Tower after I had built it and admired it for a few months, and a time frame to get it to the first recipient.

Recently, I had a meeting at my house with someone who I often will prepare a baked goodie for. It’s not a social call; it is fundraising for a 501(c)3 call (I’m the donor in this context). However, I overslept. No baked goodie. But I did incorporate her in the morning’s plans: the usual english muffin with homemade marmalade. The muffin comes straight out of the sourdough crock into a ring greased with bacon fat and sits on a rectangular baking tray greased with the bacon fat. The marmalade is the result of taking all the mandarin peels from mandarins (clementines, whatever) consumed in the house, slicing them up finely with a knife, putting them in the freezer until the container is full, and then making them into marmalade.

All of these stories — and a lot more! — are Bits and Pieces stories. The english muffins are very easy to make. Twice a day, I put some grain in the mill, grind it into a bowl, dump it into the crock, add a bit of water and stir. In the morning, I scoop it out into a ring and bake it, take it out, split it, toast it, add toppings and eat it. The total time from start to finish is long, but the amount of active time dedicated to it is very, very minimal. Bits and pieces of time and effort, scattered through the day. I’m guaranteed to be in the kitchen in the morning making tea when I make the muffin and feed it in the morning, and again in the evening when I run the dishwasher and feed it. If I were in a rush to get out the door, the 15 minutes baking time would be an issue, but I’m not, and smelling fresh bread _every_ _single_ _morning_ is deeply satisfying and source of ongoing joy.

Let’s just acknowledge all the privilege here.

And let’s also acknowledge that the Bits and Pieces can only be collected and polished and enjoyed for their shiny brightness _after_ the larger, more important tasks have been accomplished. We are already getting sleep and exercise. The kids are already in school. We are both retired. We are not just launched. Our last rocket stage has gone quiet and we are on the path that we are on.

OK: list created, stories told, acknowledgements of wealth and privilege have been included. I have some questions and comments.

First, over and over and over again, every single one of these things is something that the internet has helped me do _primarily by showing me everyone else who claims to have done it in a much more complicated and difficult way_. In the deeper past, I bought (or got from the library, or borrowed or whatever) books and articles that gave similar advice _often_ similarly complicated. To use cooking as an example, back then, I would often work my way back through the deep ancestry of recipes and dishes and cooking techniques, on the theory that what I wanted to make was often a very old dish, and I figured that there was no way in hell it used to involve all that complexity. True enough, but also, the oldest cookbooks not only don’t have good descriptions of technique (as ably depicted by Dylan Hollis’ entertaining YouTube and TikTok productions), they frequently don’t even include measurements or relative proportions.

Second BUT ALSO the internet has shown me pictures and sometimes videos that capture technique that is hard to get into words and what the product is that I’m aiming at. The sheer volume of material online means it is possible to quite rapidly understand the range of the dish that is recognizable as the dish — versus, say, going through a dozen cookbooks or asking all your aging relatives, or ordering it at several bakeries or restaurants, yes, all of which I have done in the past.

For my computer science-y types: I refactor the complex directions to extract the essentials. But only in an 80/20 sort of way.

For everyone else: I look for what is in common across the many examples, find what is shared broadly, give up everything fiddly and time consuming, adjust it for my own constraints, and then make or do whatever is left.

(And then write something about the whole process.)

I woke up at the usual alarm, but A. did not need help with her now shorter hair, so I set an alarm for 9ish, and went back to sleep. Then I was reading email in bed, forgetting I had a 10 am appointment. 10 am appointment arrived, rang the doorbell and I went, ooops. I answered the door, welcomed ML (not my walking partner), got her a glass of water and showed her into the dining room, and went to get dressed and use the bathroom.

When I returned downstairs, we chatted, and I started tea. I also showed her my process for english muffins and offered to make her one with mine. And then I offered her the homemade marmalade to taste. I feel that my offerings made up for my lateness, which also was not necessary, because she thought the whole thing was pretty funny and charming. We had a nice visit and I wrote a check and everyone was happy.

R. had come down for coffee, then went up for bridge, and then came back down. We had a brief conversation about the morning’s in-law related email. He had misread the part about his brother, doubled down when I questioned it, but I read it out loud to him and clarified the meaning was what I thought it was, not what he thought it was. I then finally thought of a potential answer to the primary instigator of this round of in-law email, drafted it. I went for a walk with M., had snack, and discussed the snottiness level of the email with R. If it were him, he just wouldn’t have said anything, but my name was specifically mentioned in a particularly intricately awful way. I will explain, but if you do not give a shit, just skip the next paragraph.

Author of email in her capacity as executor of estate asked husband and I what we were going to ask for in terms of reimbursement from the estate (there would be nothing left of the estate if I asked for reimbursement of everything, which was actually acknowledged in these texts). Author further advocated for us asking for less, so that the estate would have more specifically for Florida Man’s housing needs. I believe that I referred to my emotional state in response to all this as “incandescent rage” and I dropped out of the text conversation entirely, beyond, “What he said” after my husband responded. Author’s husband stepped in _on her phone_ to reassure that there would not be money in Florida Man’s hands, which I then texted him about separately saying that helped with the incandescent rage and also noted that if Author was or had recently been seeing a therapist, maybe that person could help her out a bit because she sounded very distressed (she did. And she still does). The intricately awful was that she tacked onto the group email both, Yes I am distressed walkitout AND generally to everyone the addendum don’t contact my husband he’s on a vacation with friends and deserves a break from the drama. Don’t we all.

So, ignoring the whole exchange seemed … a good choice in the short run, and a poor choice overall. I got the proposed response down to an acceptable level of snottiness and sent it. I apparently got it right, because she replied just to me with some additional details that indicate she’s got quite a lot of insight into what she’s up to and how she’s feeling. Other than the Florida Man stuff, I’m quite sympathetic to the things she’s dealing with — it’s all very tough stuff.

Let me just say, I am _not_ good at this stuff and it feels very fraught. If you — anyone reading this — finds themselves dealing with complex drama around death / divorce / difficult adult sibling stuff / etc., here’s a sentence you might find useful.

“My condolences to you in the multiple, complex grieving processes you are currently navigating.”

It’ll do a lot of the work for you, and hopefully keep you out of worse trouble.

Life is hard. Be compassionate to yourself.

As long as we’re all staggering around pretending it is an hour earlier than it was this time of day yesterday, so that we are most of the way through the adjustment process in time to do it with something resemblance grace or at least efficiency on Monday morning, I figured I’d do some online shopping, blog, and then write things that might ultimately land in the sequel to the advice book (you know, the thing about how to replace your anxiety with an alternative motivational system).

First up! OK, but after breakfast and at least some tea. I have had on my list of Things to Do, “Buy an apple watch for daughter”. Obviously it does not say daughter. You know how this works.

Why am I buying an apple watch for my daughter? I don’t think you care about this part, but this is actually a salient question for how I am learning to _articulate clearly_ how my motivational system works in detail, so I can explain it in writing, so that I can depict an alternative clearly and then show how that can be modified and adapted in various ways to work well for people who are Not Me.

Back in 2019, I bought a Series 5 Apple Watch. I had previously had a Series 3 Apple Watch (and there was quite probably one before that that I gave to my son, but you know? None of us care and it’s not relevant here. See how I am showing that while thinking about a task, related but NOT relevant thoughts pop up, and must be considered for salience, but can then be sent along on their way if no action is taken?). The Series 3 Apple Watch worked fine, but had developed an annoying habit of doing that Chirp that indicates it is done charging. And it would repeat at random intervals thereafter through the night. Awful! I tried various chargers and did some research online and then said fuck it, I’ll just buy a new one. Then daughter wanted a watch so I gave it to her, because I wasn’t sure if she’d really wear it or for how long, and I did not want to buy a new Watch and have it sit there unused. Well, she uses it all the time, and so when we are on vacation and sharing a hotel room, I am listening to that fucking Series 3 Chirp indicates it is done charging throughout the night.

So on this most recent trip, I came home with an item on my To Do List to buy my daughter a Watch. It is an Important item (because we travel and it keeps me awake) but not urgent (I won’t be traveling for the rest of this month) task, that does have a specific deadline, but not a drop-dead deadline. It’s not like You Have to File Taxes By Date Blah or Pay Tax Money By Date Blah type deadline. It’s like eat the baked goodie before it molds type deadline. You’ll be sad if you miss it, but that’s more or less the extent of it.

Important, Not Urgent, Time Specific BUT Minimal Punishment for missing

Because it has this set of characteristics, I waited for a time when my daughter was around to consult with on aesthetic details, and when I felt like shopping, and when I would be sitting down drinking a beverage and dinking around online. Buying a replacement watch for my daughter has some requirements (consult with her on aesthetic details) and the activity is shopping, sitting down, compatible with non-alcoholic beverage consumption. Note: _non_-alcoholic beverage consumption. Don’t sit down at the Apple Store website with a spirit forward beverage. They have some beautiful shit there, and when it arrives, you’ll have to set it up which can be annoying and time consuming. In theory, you could decide what to buy ahead of time and only buy that while drinking, but as a practical matter, disinhibition is a real thing.

I know that this is complicated. This isn’t something that will be in this form in the final versin of the hypothetical Advice Book 2 I’m writing. I’m just trying to dump what’s happening in my brain out while it is happening so I can get a good hard look at it and start the process of simplifying it _without losing important detail_ that is crucial to helping someone else learn how to do it.

Let’s recap!

I got up and it is Spring Ahead. This is a Classic Nothing Will Get Done Sort of Day. So, I had breakfast and some tea, and then picked a task that is Fun — shopping online — and that I had pre-committed to — buying an Apple Watch for my daughter — and that I had satisfied _all the constraints_ (her presence, mostly) in order to do. It is a task I personally care about _a lot_ (I want fewer wakeups while on vacation).

I went to the online store and picked out what I thought would be the watch she wanted. I went through the measuring process for band size. I confirmed with her what I had selected (she looked at the alternatives, and then she agreed I had indeed picked the one she liked best). We discussed whether to get cellular and I talked about how I used to get cellular on things like iPads, but stopped a long time ago. Then she wanted to know how to use her phone as a hotspot so I showed her how to do that _and also_ how in general to use the settings search bar to find things and also how to adjust options (edit password, turn on compatibility). We decided to NOT get the cellular, which made the shopping process _much_ simpler (no interaction with cellular company! No setup required!).

If I had never shopped online before, this would have been a _terrible_ task on a Spring Ahead morning. If I did not enjoy shopping online, this would have been a less than great task on a Spring Ahead morning, but I might have done it anyway, because Sleep. If I wasn’t sure if she was going to wear this watch, it would have made it very hard to pull the trigger on the buy button (because these things are not cheap in any configuration). (If you are wondering, but you could have bought her one of the cheaper ones; 8 is expensive! I totally agree but I also sort of was excited to have a pulse-oximeter built into at least one Watch in the family. I can leave the stand-alone pulse oximeter at home, then, when traveling.)

You can see how since this task required the involvement of another person, other tasks popped up along the way: “How do I set up a hotspot”. I knew she had an interest in this, but it had not been important enough _to me_ to take any action on it. However, it took less than 2 minutes to _show her_ (most effective teaching method ; talking is so much worse), so I just did it. I don’t ever need to track that item on my list because it never was Important Enough to Me to put it on the list, and it wasn’t Important Enough to Her to ask me to put it on the list, and it was Quick Enough and Possible to just do it when it arose this time.

“Blog” is an every day to do list item. I have satisfied that for today.

“Work on some sort of writing project” is an ongoing item, does not have to be every day, but I’m trying to maintain some amount of momentum. I have satisfied _that_ for today.

And I can edit “Buy daughter Watch” on my Note to be “WF daughter’s Watch ordered 3/12 on apple store”.

Whew! That’s a lot! And that’s just background task management in my head. I knew this was going to be tricky to explain, but holy shit. It’s so much more than I had realized.

ETA:

I tacked this link onto the end of the TOC / structure note so I won’t lose track of it.

There’s a whole amorphous thing I don’t know how to describe that is basically “Reuse / Recycle But For Everything”. It’s Shop Your Closet, Cook Your Pantry. It’s Roll for Sandwich. And here, it’s things like, I blog every day, I want to make progress on a writing project, hey, I can make that the same thing. I can barely function and just want to look at pretty stuff and buy it. There’s a pretty thing I have to buy. Hey, I can make that the same thing. There are people who during lockdown, job went remote, so they took 3 other remote jobs. Sometimes, those people are grifters, and are collecting the paycheck and not doing the work and sticking around until people start to notice then moving on before they get mad enough to PIP you and give terrible references. DON’T DO THAT. But some people figured out that the empty spaces of multiple jobs meant you could match them up. THAT IS FINE. As long as you make sure you are enjoying life as part of your Important Urgent Ongoing.

ETAYA:

A friend asked about WF. Here is my reply:

WF is Waiting For. In a multi-step process towards a goal (like, goal is for daughter to have a new watch), I have nothing _I_ can do right now. WF items capture that status. Usually, I don’t put dates on them, but if it’s expensive and I’m waiting for it and I might forget, I will, and also, if I feel like I’ve been waiting too long for something and I research and ping someone about it, like, I’m trying to schedule something, WF a reply, some time passes, I’m like, when did I send that message? I’ll research, put the date of the original AND the date of the reminder and often a Expected date, so if I see I’m past the expected date, I know to take action, otherwise, it is a reassurance that things are happening and I don’t need to do anything currently.

Having a list of WF is _phenomenal_ for reducing random noise in the brain.

Walkitout adding more here:

I will also note that I almost everything I do with lists is a personalized adaptation / minimization of David Allen’s GTD system. GTD is sort of the overarching, kitchen sink system, but is far too heavyweight for my personality or my level of commitments (also, he’s so paper centric!). If you read _Getting Things Done_, and understand the purpose of the elements of his system, you can figure out what you need and incremental adaptations to come up with something that you enjoy using.

All that said, almost _any_ personal organization / time management / decluttering / wtfery can be adapted. They all have the basic elements present in some form. GTD is useful for me because it’s unusually detailed in explaining the purpose of each component.

That said

If I have recommended _The Worry Trick_ to you, and you maybe even got it from the library or bought it or whatever, and you have not read it, and you feel moderately bad about that because I recommended it to you and you or someone you know is very anxious (like, in a disabling, symptom-causing sort of way) and you just can’t figure out why you haven’t read it and that, too, is adding to your anxiety, I have news for you!

No one is still here, and I am okay with that.

Anyway.

I did not finish reading _Future Tense_ because the author advocates for anxiety as a way to motivate oneself to do … everything in life that needs to be done but that isn’t insanely fun and easy to do and gamified and wtf. It’s terrible advice so I DNF’d it. And I have been fucking _haunted_ by that book, as I realize again and again how many people I know who truly _suffer_ from anxiety are in fact using anxiety to motivate themselves to do all kinds of things.

The news part: I am working on a clear, simple presentation of an alternate motivation system. And I commit to _not_ nagging at you to let go of the anxiety motivational system until I have a Good Enough replacement system to offer you. I expect that if the alternative motivational system is Good Enough, that it will be dead easy to let go of the anxiety as soon as the alternative has been adopted. If it _isn’t_ good enough, I’ll just circle back around and incremental it until it is.

_In general_, my response to the idea and practice of Gratitude Journals is to want to punch the person urging them in the face. Since I generally have a background value of Only Punching People Who Probable Neutral Third Parties Called In to Adjudicate Would Agree Definitely Needed to Be Punched, I avoid the sort of people who advocate for the gratitude journal type of thing.

However! I also recognize that I am ignorant and sometimes I want to correct my ignorance. I was talking to a friend about Gratitude Journals, and he described his mother’s Gratitude Journal, that she started keeping on encouragement from her church, and sneaking in and reading it and it really wasn’t at all about gratitude; it was about grudges. This cracked me up. So then I went to wikipedia, which has an entry on Gratitude Journals, and now I have a time frame problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal

Wikipedia seems to think this is “early research” on gratitude journals and let’s just say that it’s _way_ after the friend was no longer having anything to do with his mother.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdf

It’s an interesting article, because it actually compares gratitude journals with other approaches to getting one’s subjective assessment of one’s life and expectations for the future to be more positive and hopefully also improve other health measures / health activities (getting enough sleep, exercise, etc.). Other approaches include the ever-popular, It Could Be Worse (they call that downward social comparisons).

It is a consistent observation that Mormon women often score highest on all kinds of measures of subjective happiness, and when you look at things like suicide attempts by Mormon women, you really wonder whether one should pay any attention at all to subjective measures of happiness (yes, I changed that slightly — pick whichever one you like best and go with it. I can’t decide).

Anyway. Reading this article has clarified why I feel a strong aversion to Gratitude Journals, and I think I will go forward from here NOT suppressing the desire to punch people in the face, but rather to converting it into a particularly entertaining monologe on how I am Pro Reality and Pro Neutral Assessment, and since Gratitude Journaling is Positivity Biased, I am no more okay with it than I am with a variety of things (such as catastrophizing as a way to cope with anxiety, or creating a sense of scarcity in order to be more frugal, or delusionally believing that one is disgustingly huge in order to stay on a diet) that are Negativity Biased.

This episode in Shadow Work is brought to you by My Ongoing Search for Strategies of Stable Resilience

Are you curious about Shadow Work? This is a great, short article describing it: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-shadow-work

When I described Shadow Work (very poorly, compared to that linke!) to a friend who works in the field, she said it sounded like A.C.T., which she found personally helpful. A.C.T. is definitely related, and there’s a lot to like about it, altho again, I’m gonna sit here and carp about the deviation from neutrality.

Here is a good, short resource on A.C.T.:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy

In general, whenever someone urges stopping suppression of negative emotions (Tied Up in Nots, for sure!), I am deeply in favor. Negative emotions exist for a purpose! Our job is to figure out what that is. We learn from them. When we learn what we care about, and what action it is important for us to take, then we investigate how to effectively take the necessary action, and we use that powerful motivation of negative emotion to power us over the hump of doing it. With the plan in place, and as long as we make progress on the plan, the negative emotion will reduce in intensity. Once we are moving, we don’t need motivation! We are on our way. But this summary is _my_ summary. Shadow Work and A.C.T. are less mechanistic. Probably less of an asshole about it, too, honestly.