Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 24

Changing Your Life

Sitting here writing about changing my life with advice from a self-help book when I feel as if that’s an impossible task. It’s almost as if someone snatched away the me I used to be, and frankly, all I want to do is get her back. Where did the Cindy who loved yoga and writing go? When did my resolve to eat healthfully disappear? I’m reading STICK WITH IT as a last-ditch effort. The book bases its premise on an acronym SCIENCE and does claim that all the advice is science-based. Since last report I’ve read two more chapters and actually made some progress. Did some backsliding, too.

I’ve already written about stepladders and community in previous posts. This past week I felt I needed a super dose of help so I tackled “Important” and “Easy.” I can sum up those two chapters swiftly. “Important” is all about priorities. If you think the change you want to make is important, you’ll try harder to make it and keep it. Sean Young, the author, sites a study about the three most important things in many people’s lives.

Money, health, and relationships are the top three. Turns out, as long as you’re not destitute, money isn’t important to health or happiness. People with money can still get death sentence diseases or be clinically depressed. People with lots of money are often miserable in their relationships.

It’s easy to think “if I just had X amount of dollars, all would be well.” I’ve thought that myself many times. One of the changes I’d like to make is in my health. “If I hired a chef, I’d be able to eat better with less effort. I’d also be able to hire a private yoga teacher.” All true but I can see that money wouldn’t take away temptation as far as cake goes and if I didn’t feel like working out, a coach wouldn’t motivate me to do it.  I’d just cancel. Health has to be important enough to me to change my eating and exercise habits for the better.

My other goal is to finish my book. I actually did complete a writing project that was on my to-do list. To get my books on audio, I had to fill out five spec sheets, choosing a section of each story to be narrated. After weeks of procrastinating, I got it done this past week. So that’s what I mean…this self-help method is working to a point. But all the money in the world can’t conjure that spark of hot desire that compels me to tell a story and get it in great shape for my editor’s eyes. But, since it’s important to me, partly because of the writing communities I’ve been a part of for so long, I am determined to get it done this summer.

So much for “important.” Next is “Easy” and I do know that “easy” helped me start a yoga practice again. I simply loaded Gaia onto my computer and with a couple of clicks and a move from chair to floor, I’m ready to go. No special equipment or clothing needed. No trip in the car to the yoga studio. “Easy” works for me as far as exercise goes.

Eating the right food is a bit more complicated. Fast food is easy. The stocking, preparing and cooking of whole nutritious food takes way more energy. Stepladders (that first helpful hint in SCIENCE) breaks down difficult or complex tasks, which does make them easier. I’m still working with my goal of eating right. And I’m trying not to bask too long in the glory of finishing the tasks for the audio books.

I have a set of steps for completing the book project, too. Meanwhile I’m still reading. I’ve done S, C, I, and E. I can’t wait to see what the heck N is all about. Neurohacks. Hmmm. Something with the brain, I suspect. SCIE/NCE. Maybe I can get this book finished by next weeks so I’ll have all the tools necessary to implement my goals.

 

 

Tagged: diet, exercise, goals, motivation, SCIENCE, Sean Young, self-help, sticking with it, writing, yoga

Community

The second way to stay on track in “Stick to It” is having a community that supports your efforts and goals. Weight Watchers is a strong established community for me. My primary goal is to eat better and lose weight. I consistently eat better and lose weight when I am “on program.” When I’ve paid the money for the membership, I am on program. So my goal of eating healthy and losing weight is working well right now and a big reason for that is community. I know all the Weight Watcher tricks. I also know they don’t work for me unless I use community. Something about attending meetings and stepping on that scale works for me better than going it alone.

My other goal of practicing yoga also has a community, but it’s a bit different. I like Gaia very much, although there are no physical meetings. No scale to step on, nobody to talk to at meetings, no stories to share. At least I have not found a message board or anything like that yet. Still, in looking around for a community forum, I rediscovered Byron Katie, who has a video up on Gaia. While I watched the video about what Katie calls “The Work” I took a lot of notes, because even though I’ve read all her books, I wanted a refresher.

In that way, I did find what I was seeking. Katie reminded me that sticking to new habits cannot happen if I keep telling myself things like “I can’t do yoga and write on the same day.” And “writing takes all my energy.” And “I only have so much energy and I need to choose mental energy or physical energy.” Those were just a few of the self-defeating thoughts I was thinking before Katie reminded me about letting go of the negatives and turning them around. What the mind believes, the body obeys. So I’ll be letting those negative thoughts go. I don’t need or want them anymore.

I also realized since my last post that I have a third goal. I want to get back to a consistent writing schedule for the final polish of the novel and I want to finish the spec sheets for my audio books. Community is tricky for writers. Most of us need a lot of alone time to get our work done. I don’t write in coffee shops, but some writers do. They often find community there. For me, solitude and quiet work best when I’m immersed in a writing project.

I do belong to a couple of writing groups and I feel fortunate to have these communities. I never write more diligently than when my critique group is about to meet. Aside from the week before our monthly meeting, that diligence toward writing has been missing lately, for a variety of reasons. Thinking back to what works for me, I write consistently with NaNoWriMo, because during National Novel Writing Month we have clear goals and there’s a place to upload your daily word count.

The NaNoWriMo community has added a ton of stuff to their menu through the years. They may have a daily check-in for writers with a word count uploader that goes beyond November. That would work for me. Just a place to go every day to say how much I wrote. The other thing I can do until I find such a community is to use Katie’s process to get honest with myself about why I’m not writing. Because obviously there is a huge disconnect between what I say I want (to write every day, to finish polishing my novel, to get those spec sheets finished and sent in) and what I’m actually doing about it.

I’m still in process with the whole idea of sticking to goals until they become habits by using the SCIENCE method, but at least I have some steps for the goal of writing every day.  First, see if NaNo has something to offer similar to the November motivator. Next, check in with myself using Katie’s program. It’s pretty simple and quite effective. Katie is a life-changer and I’ve been long overdue for a refresher course in The Work.

Next up: Updates on my progress with goals and how I’m incorporating “I” for “important” the next step in the SCIENCE process. My guess it has something to do with prioritizing.

 

Stick With It

Rewrote the end of the manuscript I’ve been working on for a few years now. The first and last chapters always need the most revision. But I think this time I’ve got it. The photo is of the finally finished product. I say finished by that’s just the story I’ve told. Now I need to edit, add chapter headings, and construct a timeline. These are things I’d rather not do, but do them I must. Only then, when I feel the narrative is as tight and the writing as polished as I want it to be, can I send it to my editor.

I have a lot of experience sticking to my writing projects. In other areas of life, I’m not so great. I’ve gained and lost weight for 25 years, never able to stay for long on the slim end of the scale. I’ve also started and abandoned every kind of exercise program you can imagine from running to weight training to every kind of dance class under the sun to yoga. I like yoga best, but even that hasn’t stuck as firmly as I wish.

Which is why when I was at the bookstore the other day, a book called “Stick To It” caught my eye. I’d just had a bad report on my blood sugar from my doctor (I can never stick to the plan not to eat cake, either) and she suggested I go on the Mediterranean diet. While at the bookstore, I picked up a cookbook, too. The Mediterranean food pyramid looks a bit different than the one from the USDA.

Because I’ve been on so many diets, I worry that this is yet another one I won’t be able to stick to. Thus, the new self-help book might finally give me ways to stick to a diet and exercise routine that work for life. Here’s hoping. The subtitle to the book by Sean Young is “A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life–For Good.”  Young has a process he calls SCIENCE. It’s an acronym for stepladder, community, important, easy, neurohacks, captivating, and engrained.

Over the weekend I finished a couple of chapters. The stepladder concept is simple and makes sense (unlike some of the other words that seem silly, like “captivating” or strange like “neurohacks”). Stepladders are just breaking goals down into manageable steps. Before that, people need to discern what goals are really dreams. Dreams come after you’ve done the work with the steps toward a goal. That makes sense. One step at a time.

I outlined some steps toward my goals of exercising more and eating right. I even rejoined Weight Watchers (the “C” in SCIENCE is) so there’s my community for diet. I bought the cookbook. And each day I’ve used at least one recipe from the cookbook. So, I’m eating Mediterranean. I also joined an online group called Gaia (gaia.com) that has a terrific 20 minute yoga flow. I’ve managed to do that once. I plan to do it again today, but not sure if I will have the time since I need to pack for a much anticipated trip to Seattle to meet my new granddaughter, Julia June, just a few weeks old. We leave early tomorrow morning.

Not bringing the book with me, but I will be grocery shopping for easy Mediterranean fare like hummus and pita and grape leaves. I kind of know how to do this from my years as a vegetarian. I always get lots of exercise in Seattle. Owen likes the playground down the street, Murphy likes a walk, Al loves riding a bike around the neighborhood the kids live in, everybody in that house loves being active, so I know I will be more active than usual too, but in a fun way. I’m sure I’ll be doing my regular sun salutations, and Gaia has a mobile app, so I may even try that. Maybe.

I plan to write a series of posts on “Sticking With It” upon my return from Seattle  I’ll track my progress here. The main goal for this week is to reconnect in real time with my Seattle family. Namaste.

 

 

 

Tagged: community, diet, Gaia, health, SCIENCE, Sean Young, Stick With It, Weight Watchers, yoga

Imagine

A few weeks ago, Yoko Ono was officially granted co-writing credit for the most popular song of the 20th Century. In taped interviews before he died, John Lennon said he should have credited her when the song was published, because he used her concept and song lyrics, mostly from Ono’s already published book Grapefruit. Lennon said he didn’t give Ono credit at the time because he was too selfish and insecure. It takes a big man to admit belittling a woman.

Lennon went on to say that if a man had helped create the song, he would not have had a problem giving credit where it was due. So, whether it was because Ono was his wife or because she was a woman, or both, Lennon at first overlooked Ono’s contribution. Ono stayed silent about it, but when she learned that the songwriting gods were officially changing the credit for “Imagine” to include her, she was very happy. Being recognized for what she helped create is a vindication Ono never sought, never imagined. ❤

In another arena on this American Independence holiday weekend, cable newswoman Mika Brzezinski has not fared so well. President Donald Trump insulted her on Twitter, invoking blood, as he loves to do when belittling strong women who dare to step onto his playing field. Exactly one minute after Brzezinski reported the factual news that Time magazine had asked Donald Trump to take down four fake cover photos falsely glorifying himself that were displayed at his golf courses, Trump gleefully mocked Brzezinski, saying she tried to speak to him at a party but he said “no” and that “she was bleeding badly from a face lift.”

She was reporting factual news; he was lying and playing the gender card. She wasn’t bleeding, not even a little bit, as press photos from the party clearly show.

This was Thursday. Guess what dominated the news Friday? Not reports that 34 million people will lose their health care under the new plan Trump endorses. Not a story about what finally seems a solid collusion link between a Trump campaign associate and the Russians: a Trump surrogate asked Russians for hacked Clinton emails. Trump likely knew these press reports were about to go public. Political news anchor Rachel Maddow posits that this is why Brzezinski got the Twitter tirade.

I’m not the only woman who wonders why our president seems to hate women. Is he just another insecure male chauvinist, like John Lennon admitted he once had been? Is he the social media bully his wife says she plans to fight in her role as FLOTUS? Mrs. Trump seems like a nice woman. When asked about her husband’s proclivity to viciously attack, she said when he’s insulted, he hits back ten times worse. She wasn’t defending him. She was stating a fact. And it made me wonder if Mrs. Trump knows this from firsthand experience.

In women’s fight for equality in this country that loves to say “everyone is created equal” Yoko Ono took a big step forward. It’s too bad our president pushed us back down. Unlike John Lennon, Trump has yet to grow up and give women the respect that is their due.

Tagged: equality, gender, Imagine, John Lennon, trump, Yoko Ono

Audible Update

I’ve signed the contracts for my five TWRP titles to become audio books. My publisher has also signed the contracts, making us partners with Amazon in this audio book adventure. There’s a little more for me to do. I need to fill out a Spec Sheet–details like do I prefer a male or female to voice my book and choosing a short passage from each book for the narrator to read as a demo. The demo(s) will then be sent to me so I can get a feel of whether the recording artist is a good fit. After I agree to the narrator, that’s it on my end until the book is recorded. Amazon handles all of those details.

The excerpts I send are important; they should convey not only the tone of the book, but also give an idea of genre and plot. Audible has a staff of recording artists and the artists  choose which books they’ll narrate based on these snippets. TWRP has many authors, and lots of us want to do this deal. So the narrators will have plenty of choices. The Spec Sheets are a little like an audition for me and my work. It’s important I get them right and not rush. I do tend to rush paperwork that relates to my books; I always feel if I’m not writing fiction (or the blog) it’s more business than pleasure. And I’ve never been a fan of the business end of writing.

My TWRP books, except Blue Heaven, which is under exclusive contract to Kindle books, are available widely on the internet. They’re all on Smashwords and Nook and every other e-reader retail outlet. But the audios will only be available on Amazon. This is because TWRP and Amazon have done a deal together that makes it very lovely for TWRP authors. TWRP is a small boutique publisher and they are almost entirely about e-books. Yes, they have print editions,  but they do these mainly as a courtesy to their authors, and have no print distribution. TWRP authors hand-sell their print editions at conferences, book festivals, and brick and mortar bookstores.

About the money, I pay nothing for this new perk. I receive royalties that are in line with what I’m paid for e-books. Another question some authors ask is “Can I narrate my own books?” and the answer is maybe, if you have a home recording studio. In my view, this work is best left to the professionals. The last thing I will do before my books become available in audio is to listen to each of the entire books, I’m thinking of it as an ear edit, and it’s my job to note any mistakes so that the book will be perfect for paying customers.

Eventually my publisher would like to pursue audio books for other venues but that’s down the line a bit. I understand from all the recent discussion on our author chat board  that recording audio books is a very pricey deal. If an indie author wants to do this, it would cost them anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Which is why the Amazon contract is a sweet deal.

 

Tagged: Amazon, Audible, audio books, TWRP

Sex (or not)

[image error]I love my publisher. I really do. They are lovely people and they’ve just partnered with Amazon to bring their authors out in audio. I’m not a fan of audio books, but apparently there’s a huge market. We don’t HAVE to get our books onto audio, but why wouldn’t you? It costs the writer nothing, it’s no work for the writer, the writer collects royalties. All we need to do is sign a contract for each book we want to go audio. It’s for 7 years, but I wasn’t planning on taking those books anywhere else. Seemed like a clear win to me.

Then I remembered the other contracts I signed. There was a clause I wish had not been there. I didn’t remember agreeing to it. My eyes must have gazed over the words about my being required to write a “consummation scene.” Or maybe I didn’t exactly know what it entailed–maybe I just thought, okay, sex scene. Check. So I wrote my first book and sent it in and my editor wrote back to say “you know, you need to write the consummation scene.”

Me: “How is that different from the scene I wrote the first time they had sex?”

Editor: “You don’t describe the moment of consummation.”

Me: “Like, graphically?”

Editor: “You can be euphemistic. But readers need to see it.”

Me: “That was in my contract?”

Editor: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay.”

I checked. It was. Listen, I’m no prude. I have nothing against sex scenes, although I usually skip them. Because nobody knows how to write a good one. Or it’s rare. So why not just shut the bedroom door and leave it at that? But I’d signed the contract so I researched how to write a good sex scene. I learned that romance authors call these scenes “love scenes” ~ there’s got to be a romantic build up to the scene. The characters must be in love. Consummation is about emotional surrender. Sex is about allowing your character to be vulnerable, to trust, to hope, to need. And you don’t want it all to sound like stereo instructions, but neither do you want the metaphors to obscure the reality of the physical thing happening.

That sounds difficult. And it is. That’s why almost nobody does it well. So how will the consummation scenes I wrote (one for each book)  play on audio? I don’t know. A contract extension is a simple document. However, it assumes all language of the original contract. So what I do know is that the bedroom door will be wide open.

Tagged: audio books, book contracts, consummation scenes, love scenes, sex scenes

A Good Wife

[image error]Life continues to surprise me in happy ways since I’ve returned from my solo winter in Florida. One of the things that I particularly notice that makes my life easier is my approach to dinner. Before Florida, once a week I spent an hour going through my collection of cookbooks, making out a weekly menu of meals. At the same time, I wrote down any items I needed for each dinner on a page-long shopping list.

This made me feel like a good wife, even though half the time, Al would not be home in time for dinner. He might unexpectedly work late. Or the gym had been very crowded. Perhaps Hall Road was a parking lot due to construction work. Even if Al was home, he’d rarely come to the table when the meal was ready. He was “just finishing” something on the computer or in the garage. Often, I’d be done with my meal before he even sat down. It irritated me. After all, I put work into making a nice dinner. Why was it so difficult for him to sit down to eat with me?

All that changed in Florida. I didn’t consult cookbooks, I didn’t formulate a weekly menu, and sometimes I didn’t even have a list. I just went into the grocery store and bought what was fresh and appealed to me in the moment. I ate when I was hungry and sometimes had Cherrios for dinner. Or I’d add lots of fresh fruit to yogurt and sprinkle nuts on top. I’d have salad with chopped chicken and tomatoes. My tastes, when they’re just about me, are pretty simple.

When I came home to Michigan, I kept meaning to pick up where I’d left off with the menu planning and the overflowing grocery cart, but it didn’t happen. These days I jot quick lists for 2-3 dinners and continue to eat the Florida way when I feel like it. I make the two or three meals a week, but if Al is late or I’m not hungry, cooked food goes into the fridge. Now that he has learned to serve himself while I was in Florida, he’s more than happy to put a plate together and pop it in the microwave. This is embarrassing but, before Florida, I used to make a plate and heat it up for him when he came home late. I’d even bring it to the table and set it before him. It was part of that wacky good wife thing.

Since I’m not eating those dinners every night, there are more leftovers and no need for the chore of daily cooking. Because he had to shop and cook on his own while I was away, not to mention clean house and do laundry, Al has no problem eating my leftovers. What has stayed with me from Florida aside from a more relaxed attitude toward menus and shopping is that my idea of what it means to be a good wife has undergone some serious revision. And that makes me pretty happy.

Tagged: dinner, domestic chores, home-cooking, housewife, housework

100 Years

[image error]Yesterday, Time magazine had a little item tucked into its pages saying Stephen Hawking believes we have about 100 years to find a new planet to call home before global warming makes Earth uninhabitable. Such a little piece, such a big story. Well, unless you don’t believe in global warming. (I do.) Or you don’t believe in science. (I do.) Or you don’t think Stephen Hawking is all that smart. (He’s a genius, one of a handful of the most brilliant minds in the world.)

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This little fact about global warming chills me. 100 years isn’t that long. And our new president doesn’t believe in global warming or spending money or resources on trying to stop rapid climate change. He’s already overturned, or is in the process of overturning, just about all the safeguards Obama put in place to clean up Earth and reverse climate change.

100 years. I have a new grand baby coming next month. She’ll be my third, the first girl in our family in generations. My mom was the only girl, I was her only girl, and I had two sons, no girls. Then my sons (or rather their wives!) each had babies, both boys. So we’ve been waiting awhile for this little lady. In her lifetime, with all the health and medical advances, she may expect to live to age 100 and beyond. But will she be able to afford the ticket to Mars or wherever humanity will go once our own planet is uninhabitable? I’m thinking of my grandsons, too. They’re still toddlers. Will they be the last generation of children born on Earth?

This world can be a terrible place to live. Famine, genocide, war. But it is also beautiful: meadows, sea, sky. Skyscrapers, medical miracles, love. You. Me. Everybody else. And obviously it’s the only planet we’ve got. For about a hundred years, if Hawking got the science right. I have great faith in science and scientific genius, so I feel that the chances are good when Hawking says 100 years, he’s not kidding.

I’m disturbed and upset, but part of me wonders if his warning will change anything. Is there hope for us if we start to clean up our act right now? Because as far as I know, nobody’s really looking seriously at moving the entire population of this planet to Mars. And I’m betting if we do find somewhere to go, the price of a ticket will be beyond the means of most people. I see the rich people packing their diamonds and furs, but what about everybody else?

Tagged: climate change, global warming, Stephen Hawking, Time magazine, uninhabitable earth

Crazy People Pleaser

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The day my first baby was born, my mother visited us in the hospital. She brought cigarettes. I had stopped smoking for nine months, and I hadn’t intended to start again. But Mom was being thoughtful by bringing me cigarettes, so in order not to hurt her feelings, I lit up.

Sounds crazy. I risked my health and the health of my children so as not to say no to my mother. Her approval meant a lot and I knew how easily she could take it away. I had to be very careful to never displease her, even if it meant doing something that my brain told me was a bad idea.

I didn’t quite trust my own mind back then. There was suspicion buried deep in my heart that I wasn’t very smart. Or good. The only way anybody was ever going to love stupid bad me was if I did everything I could to make them happy. And also, if I did everything I could to make others happy, I would at least be good, if not smart.

Then time went on and I realized I was pretty smart in some ways. Didn’t that cum laude on the college diploma say so? Didn’t the second degree, earned at night while teaching all day, reinforce I was good at something? Still…giving myself a break was always a challenge, because I believed that pleasing others was the way to be good. If you thought about yourself first, well, that was selfish.

This crazy-ass philosophy of life stopped making sense to me at some point. Or so I thought. Then I took an inventory a few months ago that to my surprise revealed I was still had a tendency to say yes when I yearned to say no. I still had some assumptions about self-care that needed tending. Like the one that goes “I will honor my commitments.”

I have a very hard time letting other people down. I’d rather suck it up and do the job I signed up for, even if the circumstances around it had changed and doing the job would cause me serious grief. Maybe because in some way following through on every commitment, even those that had run out of gas and just weren’t good for me anymore, still made me feel better about myself. If I quit, people would boo me. If I stayed, people would admire me and say “Isn’t she fabulous? How could we ever do it without her?”

Except. Wanting admiration from others more than tending to self-care is like smoking a cigarette you don’t want just to impress somebody else.

Tagged: happiness, parental approval, people pleasing, self-care, self-esteem

Beware of Darkness

[image error]Yesterday I took part in an election in an organization I’ve belonged to for nine years. I knew there was a person in power who is an admitted homophobe; she actually wanted us to put a note on the new membership page saying we would read no gay or lesbian material. The board voted that down. One of her more ridiculous comments was “all gay writing is porn.”

So we, the other members of the board, had to do some educating–about what gay literature is and is not, about civil liberties, and about how she was kinda asking us to break the law because she thinks it’s a sin to be gay.

This morning, after a night of reflection and reading, I resigned from that organization because this person remains on the board and with the election shaking out the way it did, I had little hope she would be ousted any time soon.

The irony is I worked in harmony with this woman for eight years before she began making racist and homophobic statements to not just the board, but to me privately. Be careful who you befriend, my friends. Sometimes they are hiding a darker side. I’m not sure why her darkness has started seeping out now, but I am sure that I want no truck with it.

So I’m done with that volunteer position on which I spent so much time and energy and moving on to better things. Hate has no place in my heart or my life.

Tagged: civil rights, friendship, gay literature, homophobia, porn, sin, volunteerism