It happened in one of those all to rare moments of clarity, where you are aware without praise or condemnation of yourself in all your glory and your flaws. Suddenly I was struck with it, this message of what I should be doing with my life. Not what should be my passion or my vocation or my hobby or my, but my philosophy. It was so clear that I was able to write it all down, word for word several hours later and it has stuck with me ever since:

It is my full intention from this point forward to live life up. Eat it up, revel in the joy of the world, make space for the things I value and eliminate those that I do not. To be centered in the here and now with an eye on the future. To live it up.

From this I condensed the LIVE, EAT, REVEL title. First and foremost is LIVE.

thrive: to grow or develop vigorously; flourish

There is being alive, living, and then there is thriving, a subset of living that moves forward. Thriving doesn’t just exist in the staus quo, but pushes the envelope, even with itself. Thriving is the way that I feel when I feel my best.

ponder: to consider something deeply and thoroughly; meditate

For me there are few things more satisfying in life than a good think. To sit and reflect, on myself, the state of the world, the things that are pinging around in a friend’s head, whatever is substantive I want to talk and think and ponder.

love: to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for

Because the passion of love is what pushes me forward, what gets me out of bed each day and gives me the courage to change myself, and perhaps the world. Love of my passions, my interests. Love for our fellow human beings and the borader world.

choose: to select from; to want

I added choose to my list of live adjectives because I wanted to remind myself that to feel alive I need to ponder and I need to love and then I need act, I need to choose to do. It is far to easy for me to remain in my head with my thoughts about how to change without ever doing anything different or even anything at all. To live, I choose.

How could you not want to work your butt off to help these kids - they're cute and they do fractions!

and homelessness services non-profit. I know that what I do makes a big impact, yet I frequently feel that I could do more. There is a feeling I get if I’m not in go-go-go mode that I am not doing everything I can. That I’m failing. I’ve already decided that there will be no more crash & burn, so the question bouncing around my head now is, what do I do? How do I live day to day so that I continue to feel fulfilled by my life and am able to make an impact for the rest of my life?

This issue is particularly critical for me to be self aware of because of what I do both professionally and as a volunteer. It is the work that is ripe with burnout. Perhaps because the type of people drawn to it are like me, driven from deep inside to do something important. People who, without the right insight, martyr their sanity for the cause they believe in. Two of my professors at Antioch bought this idea to my attention, Mark Wicks & Dan Dodd. Mark had an exercise on self-care in a course on counseling; Dan built a unit on burnout into a course for future humans services workers. In the book Trauma Stewardship, Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky writes about the balance of making a difference without making yourself crazy:

Somewhere between internalizing an ethic of martyrdom and ignoring ongoing crises lies the balance that we must find in order to sustain our work…Our goal is to reach the places where we can conduct our own lives with ethics and integrity – day after day, and in situation after situation.

So that’s what I’m puzzling out. How to live, in a day-to-day way, by the belief that we can be effective agents of change & have a life. It’s not like there are tons of well known examples of this either. As a helping community the role models we aspire to be like are often unhealthy or at the least unsustainable for most people. We hold up the people who leave their families behind to raise orphans in Africa or work 12 hour days 7 days a week running a school for disadvantaged kids. Perhaps this is great for them, but it is not going to work for most people, and it is not going to work for me. I need to find a better way.

So to this end I have been practicing being mindful. Just the other day when I was carrying groceries back from the car (of all places!) I had a moment of mindfulness and realized that I was rushing. I was walking fast, carrying bags of groceries, balancing keys and a coffee mug in the other hand all while caring on three different trains of thought. Fortunately one of those was the mindfulness train. I recognized what was going on, slowed down my gait, and stopped the other two thought trains. Mindfulness got the track to itself. What flashed into my head next was something I haven’t thought about in a long time – Steven Covey‘s Urgent/Important quadrants.

If you haven’t heard of this pop on over to AwakeBlogger (that I poached the below image from) and read up. It’s a fascinating way to think about what you do with your time.What I realized in that walk from the car to the house was that I was taking a quadrant II activity, buying groceries on my weekend, into a quadrant I activity; still important, but now hurried, given a false sense of urgency.

 My professional work is frequently urgent and usually important. I frequently respond to fights, call 911 several times, kick people out for drug use, serve dinner, give out medications and try to find a few moments to just talk to people. When my job is not urgent in the moment it still keeps me on the edge of my seat. Being in the urgent column can be draining but it also gives an adrenalin rush; it makes you feel important, even if you are not doing something important.

The addictiveness of the urgent column, like all addictive things, causes problems. When I reflect back on things that didn’t go so well I’m always frustrated when I realize that I had plenty of time to accomplish what needed to get done, but that my procrastination lead to it being late or rushed.  That rush is at least half of why procrastination is so rewarding. Not only do you not have to do something right now, but when it comes down to the last minute you get to run around, rushed and urgent, feeling important. This is obviously no good, but it feeds a dangerous pattern because the rush rewards the behavior.

KUOW (my awesome local NPR station) had a discussion the other day about using your smart brain to correct your dumb brain – something I recall my dad telling me to do, “Use your human brain, not your lizard brain!” The idea is that so much of what we end up doing is driven by instincts and learned behavioral patters ruled by the brain stem. Fortunately we’ve evolved a cortex, so we can have some higher level thinking if we slow down. (Figuratively and literally – the biological processes of the cortex are slower than that brain stem, if you want to let them rule you need to slow down and wait for your brain’s second thought stream).

So back to the original question: How do I live day to day so that I continue to feel fulfilled by my life and am able to make an impact for the rest of my life? How do I take all these thoughts and turn them into day-to-day actions that keep me sane and fulfilled?

I strive to practice being mindful in my work life and my home life. Set aside the time to reflect on & take fulfillment from the non-hectic parts of my work. Create meaningfulness in my home life through delicious nourishing meals, setting aside for time for enjoyment, and by building relationships with friends and family. When I do these things and spend the time to reflect on them I recognize that my sense of fulfillment can and does come from more that just my profesional work or my volunteer work, but also from my home life. That taking care of myself keeps me sane and capable of the profesional and volunteer work that is draining, but rewarding. With these actions and reflections I am able to continue.

Nice is a pushover. Nice doesn’t take risks. Nice does what’s expected and what others want. Nice smiles and says kind words, but doesn’t always mean it. Nice isn’t always fair because it wants to be liked.

What I’ve realized, and what I try to be, is fair but kind. Kind has a listening ear even when the topic or the person is difficult. Kind is sincere when it says that it cares, or offers a smile. Kind doesn’t let nice stop it from loving the difficult person or disciplining the lovable person.

If I had to pick one of the two, I’d choose to be fair. Not because it’s easier, but in spite of it being harder. Fairness is difficult. On it’s face it seems like it would be easy, you just apply the rules across the board to everyone. But is that really fair? If no matter who you are you get the same consequences then those with less capacity are at a disadvantage. Then those already disadvantaged by structural racism, sexism, homophobia, and other biases get double hit.

I suppose that’s where kindness comes in. To temper the strict edge of rules. To do it’s best to make fair as fair as it can be. Fair but kind has become my mantra of late. Making the tough calls, getting through the long days, this requires a center you can return to. A core that guides your decisions. Fair. Kind. That’s what I’ve been striving for each day. Not nice.

‎”When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

For the excuse it provides
for my lethargy
my extra cup of joe

My cell phone
Another packet of sugar in my coffee
The latest and greatest, still smelling of shrink wrap
Her approval

But These I Might Need

The potential and promise of seeds
A few moments to hold your warmth and feel your skin next to mine
The peace of a bike ride by the ocean at night
Space to be alone with thoughts
Your quiet understanding

“Time is free, but it’s priceless.
You can’t own it, but you can use it.
You can’t keep it, but you can spend it.
Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”
- Harvey MacKay

Today I went for a run. I haven’t gone in quite a while, I’ll admit it. I ran a shorter distance than I have in the past, I didn’t push myself very hard. The run itself wasn’t spectacular in that respect. It wasn’t ambitious. That was the point.

It seems like almost every spring (and I know it’s summer, but here in Seattle it still feels like spring) I get this feeling like I’m not doing enough, like there is some secret to being happy that I missed. It gets me down. Sometimes it feels like it’s going to break me.

What’s specifically been getting me down this time around is how much time I feel like I’m waisting that I need to be achieving more. This isn’t anything new to me, or most people I presume, I’ve pondered this before. My past efforts at this have felt something like this: feel like I’m not doing enough, set to many goals to fast, get overwhelmed, spend to much time feeling overwhelmed or thinking about process.

The other day I had a good friend tell me, “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who feels like they’re older than they are.” Most people feel younger than their age. I don’t. I feel ancient in a I’m-running-out-of-time way. I own my home in the best city in the world. I ‘m married to my favorite person, my life long love. I have a great full-time job in the field that I love, at a company that I respect & with plenty of opportunity for growth.

And yet I feel like I’m behind the curve. That I should have done more, learned more, contributed more. That I’m out of time. That I should just give up.

Really truly give up? It’s something that I just don’t do (for long anyways). I’ve always re-grouped & made it back again. With amazing friends and family there to remind me that it’s (mostly) a problem of expectations. Just today my husband laughed at my complaints about some piece of new tech I was using. “You have such unrealistic standards,” he said. “No I don’t!” I retorted, “I just have high standards. That’s why I married you!”

Mushy-ness aside, I just may have too high of standards for my short-term improvement. Taking things slow & steady is easier said than done. challenging myself with a busy schedule has always been a way for me to help my self-esteem (I’m busy so I must be important!). saying no to new projects has never been my strong suit. I’ve only just began to see saying no to what I don’t have time to do as a good thing. Saying, “I’d love to, but I’m sorry I can’t” is hard but it means more time for the things that I do say yes to. It’s something I’ve already vowed to do – to “make space for the things I value and eliminate those that I do not.”

This time slow and steady is the key. No rushing into dramatic changes. No fast and furious, more time for growing. Most importantly: no guilt about taking my time. No guilt because I recognize that doing it right the first time, albeit slowly, is always faster & better than crashing and burning. Rising from the ashes is pretty and all that, but I’ve been there and done that. Time to level out. No more crash & burn.