Ann Imig's Blog, page 8

Show Your Work #30BrighterDays

College Graduation: I stood grinning in cap and gown imagining a tower of all the papers written, all the blue books filled, and all the notes taken those four years. It filled me with pride and satisfaction. I didn’t sit in judgement over the content of what I’d written or how I’d performed, but rather I stood in awe at the massive amount of work completed. Best. Feeling. Ever.

I love accomplishing. I especially love having accomplished. Then I speed along and forget. Sound familiar?

Some writers hate reading their old work, some speakers wince at their own appearance or the sound of their voice.  Not me. For me, completing work fills me with self-efficacy: I made that! I pushed through. I did it!! Revisiting that work reminds me of hours of creation otherwise forgotten–pieces of myself, moments of my life.

I don’t show my work to “see how far I’ve come” (some of my best work will inevitably live forever behind me) but instead as a reminder of my evolution.

When I gave my office a makeover this summer I went through piles and piles. I found a huge stack of Brava Magazines featuring my writing dating back to 2011. I clipped each page and spread them out, covering my whole floor. I can’t find the photo I took to mark the moment, but I recreated a sample here from digital images, including photos from my “Live On The Move” humor fitness columnist days.

***

Recently we watched some old home videos from our kids’ baby and toddler days. Feeding the baby took the better part of an hour,  less by necessity more as entertainment given that time passed one spoonful at a time; a few rice grains, a pincer-grasp of shredded chicken, a bottle thwacking on the tray over and over. The endless repetition of playing, giggling, and rolling around on the bed–always followed by an earnest attempt by a toddler to see himself in and/or eat the camera varies only by onesie–the color and print distinguishing morning from afternoon.

“It’s three-o’clock” One of us says in the video.  Us then on video and us now watching ten years later–we laugh a weary laugh together. We wish we could hug them then (those babies and their parents). I have no desire to go back. I took in all that good super hard work completed, invested, paid forward to today–as we do the tween/teen version for tomorrow.

Revisiting all I’ve done reminds me of my aptitude, my capability–my range. It brightens my belief in my potential, too.

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

Low Power Mode #30BrighterDays

When the iPhone battery loses most of its charge, you get a prompt to switch to “low power mode.” Low power mode costs you brightness and speed, but it saves the phone from dying.

What great advice for humans; downshift to safeguard our energy before crashing.

Since humans don’t come with convenient displays and toggle-switches, it isn’t always easy to identify when we need to conserve our power. Certain signals might catch our attention in the short term (hunger, exhaustion, bad mood, impatience), but symptoms of a longer-term deficit can prove harder to detect (general depression or dissatisfaction, social/emotional withdrawal, a lack of curiosity/passion, illness, chronic pain).

An interesting thing about low power mode for me; when I slow down, I often feel more anxious or agitated. Keeping busy running on a full battery often allows me to ignore anxiety, and my battery naturally runs supercharged for a good long time. However zippy and hyper-productive this charge feels in the short-run, avoiding anxiety hasn’t served me in the long-run because it simply waits for me under the surface. In full power mode I never learned to sit with anxiety, not to mention work through it.

You know how if you don’t power down your phone occasionally it glitches? Sometimes it even crashes, and when you plug it in it won’t charge at all. In those cases you need to perform iPhone CPR–a hard reset–if you hope to revive it.

After several years of keeping myself plugged into a constant state of full power mode, I needed a hard reset too.

Resting** in low power mode hasn’t come naturally to me . My circuits feel slow to fire, and my ability to multi-task is definitely compromised. I kept myself in near constant motion this summer with a long list of projects, until that list and my last yellow-light reserve energy waned. This fall, without anymore energy, low power mode forced me to sit** with the anxiety that comes with doing less**; to learn to live with it. ** “Resting, sitting, and doing less” still means managing my home, family, carpool, calendar, volunteer commitments, finances, and (heaven help us all) managing my son’s soccer team–but I have cut way back on my professional life.  For now. And guess what? I think low power mode works. I feel my brain readying and responding again.

Six months into low power mode and my yellow battery indicator approaches the day it will turn back to green full power mode.  I have no expectations of returning to super charge soon, but if you’ve seen the schedules my siblings and parents keep it’s pretty clear that a bionic battery comes with my bloodline. In the meantime I’m happy to sit here preserving brightness for another day.

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

 

Fall Back #30BrighterDays

Fall back.

Fall back into leaf piles.

Fall back into leaf-jumpers were adorable in theory, but leaf piles amassed by four capable raking bodies is infinitely better in practice.

Fall back into the satisfaction of city leaf collectors taking all the leaf piles away.

Fall back into Stranger Things.

Fall back into a boy in your bed, afraid of Stranger Things, who keeps wanting to watch Stranger Things.

Fall back into chili and dal and a full menu of child-repellent stews.

Fall back into you may help yourself to a bowl of cereal instead. No not the sugar cereal. FINE fine whatever.

Fall back.

Fall back into wool socks, flannel sheets, and down comforters.

Fall back into thermostat wars, blanket tugging, and keep your icicle feet to yourself.

Fall back into old habits.

Fall back into blogging.

Fall back into Halloween candy. Whoops.

Fall back into warm fire-places. Actually, please don’t do that.

Fall back into fear of chimney fires instead of fear of gas grill fires.

Fall back into ugly toes you forget about until you’re on your yoga mat.

Fall back into longer hotter showers.

Fall back into thank God soccer season ended

Fall back into oh dear God soccer season ended.

Fall back into I never want to leave the house.

Fall back into someone bust me out of here.

Arise to brighter mornings.

 

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

Show up, then try a new another route. ZING! #30BrighterDays

When I woke up I thought I might choose an “off” exercise day today. By the time my coffee kicked in and both boys left for school, I felt energized and laced up my running shoes.

I typically run different variations of the same route, and as I neared my usual turn-around point, I decided to keep going and enjoy a detour onto the rustic trail that goes through the park (instead of the paved bike path).

I had to watch my footing given all the leaves, roots, and rocks. Ducking under low brush, side-stepping felled trees, and navigating hills and valleys jogged not only my body, but my brain. In a rare fit of inspiration–one of those moments when you can almost feel the sparks firing up your brain–I came up with a strategic vision for one of my volunteer jobs. ZING!

We don’t get to choose ZING moments of inspiration, but I find they only happen for me when I show up faithfully to practice. Sometimes we also need to try another route. Our practices can become rote and less effective when we don’t give them fresh air from time to time.

I showed up to my run today. I took another route and it gave my thinking another route too. I’m showing up here to this daily #30BrighterDays practice to tell you about it and in the service of whatever future ZINGS await.

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

 

Enduring Wisdom From Annoying George #30BrighterDays

I can’t recall now why I found George so very annoying. The word “pontificating” comes to mind; maybe he was a mansplainer, an interrupter or condescending.  I’m quite certain he was also kind and insightful. Who knows, maybe the problem had more to do with my own impatience and lack of generosity. Or maybe I’m being too generous now, and he was legitimately a top-notch butthead. I really don’t remember.

In fact, I recall relatively few people from my grad school years at all because my focus rested almost entirely on this face…

But I do remember George–a veteran of non-active military service with a receding hairline and long grey pony tail–and not because he annoyed me. I remember him because he gave me soothing words that brighten some of my darkest most frightened hours, still, over a decade later (even two nights ago when I woke up from a nightmare about a mass shooting, and then yesterday Texas suffered another mass shooting, as opposed to the Colorado Walmart shooting the week prior, and the Las Vegas massacre the week or two before that).

George and I shared the same group for our group practice class in the autumn of 2005. We learned about group dynamics and how to effectively work with groups while functioning in a group all at the same time.

Our group had plenty to process in the tragic aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The images and stories coming out of the Lower Ninth Ward haunted me and left me despondent over the state of our world– most especially that I had chosen to bring a child into it. I sobbed my fear and guilt into the safety of our circle. Annoying George responded plainly, and not with a platitude. He offered the words sincerely and personally from his own experience as a man who had traveled the world, lived and lost plenty. He said to me:

 

Ann! Life is the single greatest adventure, and this is the only world we’ve got.

 

This is the only world we’ve got. We can and should strive to make it better. At the same time we can acknowledge that violence and catastrophe has coexisted and alternated with peace and prosperity since our human adventure began.

Annoying George, thank you for your wisdom. I’m so grateful.

Fondly,

Annoying Ann

Community Brighteners #30BrighterDays

Good news surrounds us, with many hard-working people collaborating to serve others in order to create that good news. This weekend I took notice of community-brighteners.

My friend Takeyla kicked off her brand new book club geared toward 4th-7th grade Black Boys, We Read Too. Please “like” her page on Facebook so her posts can catch as many eyeballs as possible. Look forward to her writing workshops for Women of Color as well, aptly named We Write Too.

Benton liked the idea of getting her son together with other boys to explore different books, to read together and to talk about concepts and ideas from the books. “My son [Langston] was like, ‘Let’s do a book club!’ and I came across an article of a little boy who started one in his town,” Benton says. “That kind of gave me a little fuel to think I could do this and start thinking about getting boys together to meet regularly, have fun, develop a love of reading and hopefully boost some test scores in the process.” read more here from the Madison365 feature.

***

Sagashus Levingston debuted her much-anticipated (and absolutely stunning) volume Infamous Mothers. You must take the next opportunity to hear Sagashus speak (watch her TedEx talk here), and you must buy this book. She is brilliant (not to mention kind, compassionate, and very funny). Her work turns the social paradigm of Single Black Mothers on its head–meaning right side up–to show them for the community brighteners and game-changers they truly are. Buy this gorgeous book featuring 20 different leaders; sit with these stories and exquisite photos and display it proudly in your home. Let your kids ask you “What does Infamous mean?” Let your book club ask “Why Infamous?” Buy it as a gift for your own coffee table, for your favorite thinkers, and for someone in your life struggling, who might not see their own strength and transformation.

find out more about Infamous Mothers and order the book here

***

Speaking of mothers, my friend Jessie Loeb recently began offering Postpartum doula services. I spent many hours with Jessie when we were mothering babies and I lovingly refer to her as a baby-whisperer. She has a talent for parenting kids of all ages, and she also happens to be a gifted storyteller. You can find out more about her doula services and enjoy her beautiful words here.

***

Friday night our elementary school held a potluck dinner and first-ever resource fair in which local organizations, businesses and nonprofits participated in order to engage our community and inform us about all the activities, groups, and services available in our area for families and children . Of our 300 students, 70% need help making ends meet, and this event aimed to connect people to resources in a fun family event. I stopped by nearly every booth to express my gratitude to all of the exhibitors, and felt thankful to our community, the school staff, and the efforts of PTA co-presidents Samara Frame Safarik and Katie Watermolen who continually look for ways to innovate, engage, and bring us together. You can read more about the resource fair here.

***

We have dreary weather this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. Notice who brightens our world.

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

Brighten your days! They are numbered!! #30BrighterDays

That title probably emits less brightness, more infinite darkness. Stay with me!

I heard scientist and scholar Pelin Kesebir speak on Seeing and Loving Life for What It Is. Pelin studies the psychology of happiness, and her Phd research focused on death.  In her lecture, she shared that the biggest obstacle to happiness is our attempt to control that which is beyond our control, plus our resistance to reality vs. how we wish things to be.

Ultimately, Pelin asserted that on a fundamental level our denial of reality stems from our fear and denial of the inevitability of death; causing us misery. If we find some acceptance of this 100% certain fact of life–death– instead of resistance and misery, we might fill our moments with gratitude and meaning.

You could feel the discomfort in the room. American culture is death-denying and anti-aging. It strikes me how literally the commonly marketed phrase “anti-aging” describes our American mortality values; not only on a cosmetic level, but on a psychological level. Anti-aging is inherently anti-reality. No wonder everyone needs anti-depressants!

I find Pelin’s work validating and comforting, not only because I have a dark little heart, but also because it normalizes our suffering. Sometimes I experience positive or “happiness” psychology at odds with the reality of human suffering. Pelin’s presentation showed me the connection; that we can experience contentment and happiness more easily when we stop fighting the inevitability of discomfort, suffering, and death.

Knowing our days are numbered can imbue our moments with brightness and meaning. Knowing the weather is changing helps us appreciate that rare 75 degree sunny day or gives us an excuse to hunker down on a rainy day. Recovering from an illness often gives us a new appreciation for our health. Acknowledging our suffering as a natural part of living can help us move through misery more easily/quickly–without beating ourselves up for lacking a positive outlook 24/7.

When Pelin says goodbye to her loved ones (especially her family members who live in other countries) she often considers the fact that she might never see them again. It makes her even more present in the moment. While that might sound too heavy or morose for the American psyche, consider the fact that friendships and relationships are always changing. You might not be saying goodbye forever because the person could die, but because dynamics between people constantly shift. Maybe you want to savor a rare night of total hilarity with your siblings a little longer, or revel in the death of a totally sucky date with your partner.  Impermanence can be positive!

This acceptance of death in no way means giving up on life or that grief and suffering have no place– of course they do, and especially in the case of tragic death or catastrophe.  While I don’t fear my own death, I hold a ton of fear over losing loved ones.  I did my graduate work with bereaved families who endured the untimely loss of a child or spouse, and watching them recreate a life worth living– eventually holding hope for others walking a similar path–helped brighten my views on loss and resilience. Celebrating Thanksgiving at Kajsiab House last year, seated amidst survivors of war and surrounded by joy song and story, dazzled me with the brightness that can shine even after loss and death beyond our worst imagination.

Are you suuuper peeoohh’d right now that I promised brightness and gave you death? This is good practice. Life brings us endings all the time, despite our preference. Planning for them can be a luxury, a gift, and can shape your experience in many positive ways (read Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud). I contemplated, studied and sat with different ending scenarios for two years as I wrangled with the culmination of LTYM. My career coach had to remind me that everything dies eventually. Planning a “good death” for the project that both celebrated its grand finale and honored the integrity of the project ultimately left me with peace in that decision and brightness in its wake.

Whether we’re changing jobs, watching our kids grown up and leave the house, managing a health or personal crisis, or caring for ill or aging loved ones– a little more acceptance and curiosity over our place and limits of our power in the natural world, and a little less clammy clenched hands control-seeking may in fact help brighten our precious numbered days.

Thank you, Pelin!

Little Brighteners #30BrighterDays

My friend Erin runs a Montessori preschool. They teach the toddlers to set a table at lunchtime with plates, silverware, and cloth napkins. Erin models this tendency of taking a little more care with the everyday. I thought of her yesterday when I had a visitor, so I arranged this tray. Simple, but a little brighter than your average hummus tub (p.s. I think Hummus Tub would be a great wrestling name).

 

food styled and shot by an award-winning professional

Little ways I brighten a day:

Taking a little more care with what I wear

Lingering in hugs a little longer (science says seratonin gets going around 30 seconds)

Doing a little straightening-up

Looking at The New Yorker cartoons

Adding a little lipstick or color to my cheeks

Sending a note of appreciation or encouragement

Going outside to sit in a sunny spot for 5 or 10 minutes

Giving myself the gift of a brand new fresh crossword puzzle and excellent erasable pen

Singing (science again! The internal vibrations reduce stress. Plus traffic jams feel better singing along to your favorite jams)

Adding a little cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice to my coffee grounds (science says this is cheaper than Starbucks)

and finally

Really utilizing the hell out of my bitmoji

 

This post is part of #30BrighterDays; a thing I made up to brighten each day of November

Getting Ready Time #30BrighterDays

In seventh grade I got my very popular best friend Megan all to myself for trick-or-treating. I dressed as JR from Dallas wearing one of my step-dad’s sport coats, and she dressed as Sue Ellen wearing a flouncy prairie dress out of the back of my closet that someone must’ve worn in a 1970s wedding party.

We danced along the rainy streets, with a silly walk and a song about Megan’s splint. Megan had a splint because she nearly ran through a window, gashing her wrist during a middle school rendition of boys-chase-girls at a Halloween party the night before.

I still remember skipping from house to house singing about Megan and her splint OHHHHYou put yo awm (arm) in thew (there)… and you move it everywhew and you make it clean and tidy… like a wittow babies di-dy (bop bop).

We were delightfully bizarre children–even for 7th graders.

Typically we would’ve been a gaggle of girls not a duo. However, the social event of the season had already transpired. Megan still felt vulnerable with her wound, and probably welcomed a quiet night of candy collection sleepover with me. I felt so lucky.

**

I spent a lot of my growing up pretending to like activities, people, and situations that I didn’t really enjoy. I tolerated beer parties, sipping one warm Grain Belt for the seeming decade-long evening, as my girlfriends paired up with boys and disappeared. I’d mumble around a fire with some beery jocks or burn-outs for seventy five years, until I could finally find my way home to my trundle bed (where I strongly would’ve preferred to stay, with my girlfriends, for the entire night).

My favorite part about going out was the getting ready; safety-pinning each other’s jeans, calling boys, burning our bangs into sausage-roll submission with Finesse and a curling iron, eating microwave burritos, and maybe practicing our splits–all at the same time.

**

Girlfriend time remains one of the brightest lights of my life. One of my favorite parts of friendship in adulthood is that our time together could nearly always be described as “getting ready” time, with no adrenaline or hormone-fueled destination.

Even if we now use only our own eyeliner in the privacy of our own homes before meeting for drinks and appetizers at a bar, we’re still getting ready. We refuel one another with riotous laughter, held hardship, and rekindle the sparkle of the sometimes mischievous/always inspired glint in our eyes of shared pasts and loyal bonds. This brightness we can’t quite capture in our own reflection–a glimmer that helps keep our lights on inside, and prepares us for tomorrow’s labor and loving.

 

This post is part of #30BrighterDays to brighten each day of November

#30BrighterDays

Hi. It’s November. The days are getting darker and colder and grayer and damper. Sun will hold limited office hours, so I decided to plug in my blog and use it for a Lite Brite this month. Every day I plan to challenge myself to find my own brightness– to share something that will brighten my day and inspire you to find brightness, too.

This picture was taken last weekend in Sturgeon Bay. The forecast predicted rain and more rain. While rain would not interfere with our overeating and laying on the couch Door County traditions, I did dread the cabin (okay condo) fever. We strike a fragile balance between our natural family gluttony and our forced family outdoorsy. The former is a given and the latter is our only hope for an antidote.

One good thing about low expectations; even moderate outcomes can feel like pleasant surprises. It rained, but it didn’t pour. We got our outside time, and the cold damp made our retreat to the heated wifi-riffic condo even cozier.

Though the fall colors had peaked the week prior, the gold and orange leaves dazzled against the dreary background. This made me think of midlife; past our peak, dazzling anyway (especially in low light).

Some of our favorite sweet shops and ice cream stores had already closed for the season, but we filled up on Swedish pancakes piled with strawberries and whipped cream, and snagged one of the very last apple pies from the seasonal farm stand.

The sun shone brightly the last day. By then we had found our own brightness.