Zero For Five

Ep 78 Listeners’ Gen X Childhood Summ... Ep 79 Musician Teddy Thompson

Zero For Five

There’s a piece of paper stuck to the wall next to me here in my office, something I printed off in January. I do this every year, right after the holidays: make a list of five big goals for the coming year and put them where they’re just one small neck swivel away, reminding me to stay on track, make progress, keep on keepin’ on in that solitary home office.

As of today, I am zero for five on my goals. Up top for failure!

I guess I made some progress toward a few of the goals in the first sixty days of the year, but those were just baby steps laying groundwork for what was going to be a superproductive, supercharged Annus Excellentus. My book was published, the kids were thriving in their respective colleges, the podcast was picking up steam.

My plan was to have an exciting speaking career about the importance of gratitude which would allow me to travel! Which would make it easy to visit my elderly mom on the East Coast and be helpful in this phase of her life! I would even start on a new book!

Yeah. Nope.

In place of any of those things happening, here are my five actual accomplishments since shelter-in-place began on March 16th:

I am aware of birds now. I guess the hummingbirds and robins and scrub jays have always been flitting through the trees that give Oakland its name, but I didn’t have time to notice them on my way out to the car to go to dinner, drinks, concerts. Now I sit outside on my front porch – more in the past four months than in the previous 17 years of living in this house combined –and I stare into the trees, and the trees are full of birds. When I see an owl, it’s like I’ve won the Super Bowl. There is a hawk that likes to perch in the neighbor’s tree across the street, and I sometimes provide commentary to my family about what s/he’s up to, during family dinner. Like the hawk and I are old friends who have just caught up.
I have caught up with old friends. Why did it take a pandemic to nudge me into hourlong Zoom calls with people who I love and miss and haven’t seen in a decade? The chance to actually see them when I talk to them is *kisses fingers* and, I’m pretty sure, was possible before 2020, but we never used video calls. We spend a lot of time complaining about our hair and how desperate we are to see a hairdresser, and the other person always says, “No, you look great, I like the gray!” or “I think the longer hair suits you, and who says dark roots can’t be flattering?” It reminds me of when I first met these friends in high school or college or grad school and we took turns pumping each other up. There’s a reason these friends stuck around.
I have a Protest to-go bag. It’s in the kitchen, a little backpack with granola bars, a first-aid kit, hand sanitizer and an extra mask. One never knows when one will be told, “We’re meeting at Mosswood Park for the #BLM Dance Protest, bring your sign” and one must be prepared to use oneself as a White Lady Meat Shield* at any time. (*It’s a Jackie Kashian bit from Two Dope Queens and I cannot find the video anywhere, but believe me it’s the perfect analogy.)
I can add “Facilities Manager of Office Park” to my LinkedIn profile. The conversion of my solitary home office into part of an Office Park that includes satellite offices of a bank (husband/kitchen), a solar engineering firm (eldest daughter/bedroom) and UCLA (youngest daughter/roaming) was completed, under duress and with one rushed round-trip drive to Los Angeles to empty a dorm room, by March 23rd. I provide my fellow office park workers with morning coffee and nightly dinner and in return, they wash dishes, fold laundry, and put up with my lingering hugs that would, in a regular office setting, definitely be construed as harassment.
I am still upright. Today, anyway.

I don’t take #5 for granted. There are days when the staying upright is the hardest challenge of all. Days when I scroll too deep into shared fear and grief on social media, allow too much of the alarming news reports to settle in, count backward on my fingers to when I last hugged my mom (seven months and counting). Video calls with my mom, who has dementia, aren’t the same as video calls with old friends, although they are better than nothing. There are days when all of that comes tumbling down. I try to go back outside and look for hummingbirds on those days, lulled to calm as their invisible wing movements hold them steady midair, preventing them from crashing.

In the process, I’ve started to finally understand the proverbial command, “Stay in the Present Moment”. I have historically been awful at Present Moments. I literally worked as a strategic planner for part of my career; I was a Type A person being paid to stay in Future Moments. People like me were thinking about the Present Moment seventeen months ago. But when the Present Moment looks nothing like you thought it would, when the Future Moment is entirely unpredictable, you’re left with just being where you are. Don’t people pay big money for meditation retreats to learn that?

I find all the gratitude science I learned about when writing my book helps with #5. When my thoughts are spiraling about what’s going to happen to my family tomorrow or next week or next month, I try to think: where are you right now, physically? Where are you sitting? Is it safe, comfortable? Do you have food in your stomach and clean water to drink? Are you healthy? Could that be enough to be grateful for, for right now? Neural synapses, please do your thing and hold me up like hummingbird wings and help me get better at looking for the good.

I’m penciling “Be Here Now” at the bottom of my list as a goal for this year. Maybe I’ll make it to December 31 at one for six.

Here’s your song for the week, ICYMI back in April (what is time?) – Gorillaz released a new joint with Peter Hook from New Order and from the first bass note you will be transported back to 1987.

The post Zero For Five appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .