Report Cards

I spent most of Sunday with my "little," Tanna. She told me when I picked her up that she had all kinds of make up work to do, because report cards were coming out in another week, and would need to be home quickly. We ended up spending seven hours together, but her panic over her pending grades was a reminder to me of my own work review coming up - I just passed the three year mark with OC - and all that I mean to accomplish before then.

I set several goals for myself a year ago when I transitioned into the role of Development Associate (or Development Cowgirl, as I like to refer to myself). I don't remember them all off the top of my head, but I know they included bimonthly e-mail blasts, which I don't do, setting and reaching fundraising goals, which I've set, but not reached and having grant drafts together and ready for feedback two weeks prior to submission deadlines, which I also don't do.

On Thursday I worked until around 2 o'clock, at which time I hopped in "the rig" and headed to Bend for a day of hiking meetings with Katie. We have these meetings about twice a year, a chance to get outside, where we both think most clearly, and talk about our goals and accomplishments where Opal Creek is concerned. For this meeting she chose Tumalo Falls as our destination, an easy 7 mile round trip hike with the most spectacular view at the end. As we walked and reflected on our triumphs and (many) failures over the past year, I was able to think through and articulate my feelings about this past year. We've accomplished so much, really. We hired for a position that enabled me the time and flexibility to devote 100% of my efforts toward fundraising. We haven't brought in more money than the year previous, but we've both benefited from not being so over-burdened. We've established, repaired or maintained relationships with several key foundations in Oregon, we've formulated an impact statement, we've identified major fundraising drives that will make next year's development efforts more compelling, we've established a strong development committee, who, although they sometimes make me want to pitch a full on temper tantrum, are knowledgeable and helpful, if not a little hyper-critical, we've begun a quantitative review process by which to gage the effectiveness of our programs and we've worked out the kinks in the day to day work - I have learned how to create a budget, I know how to schedule a conference call, I know the standard procedure for contacting program officers at foundations, I've established a comprehensive, interactive calendar that helps me stay on task, and slowly . . . I'm inching my way closer to that goal of having polished drafts together 14 days from their due date. I'm even scheduling self-appointed due dates 14 days prior to foundation deadlines!

One thing that struck me when reading The Happiness Project was how the author, at the end of her year of actively working toward being happier, noted that the area from which she got the most satisfaction was in the tracking of her progress. She made herself charts, not unlike the chore charts I had when I was a kid, that had each day of the month on one axis, the specific goals on the other. A check mark in any given square meant that for that day, that task was completed to her satisfaction. An x meant the opposite. At the end of the month, she gaged her success by the number of checks versus x. I think that without some similar point of reference, I'll not know how well I'm doing. But I don't think the checks and x system is fluid enough. So, with Tanna as my inspiration, I'm going to begin grading myself. I've made a spreadsheet. Days of the month on one axis, the specific goals on the other, and for each day I will give myself a grade from a scale of 1 - 100. I need to keep in mind that C is passing, that A is above average and that Opal Creek cannot afford me to be failing. At all. I was always a straight A student, so this is oddly incentivized, although I have no one to pat me on the back once I do this for a month.
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Wrote this forever ago and never posted. I'll update on November soon! And then on to December!

November - Work It!

"Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well."

I am working from a coffee shop in Astoria right now. Bekah started her Wednesday shifts here a week ago and they put her up in a beautiful little hotel downtown on Tuesday nights. She asked me if I wanted to come along - of course! It's one of those rare, sunny, beautiful fall days here. I think in the three years I've lived in Oregon and the maybe dozen times I've visited this town it has NEVER been clear out. But today it's gorgeous. We'll call this my lunch break.

It's November 2nd, so my Happiness Project is officially in its second day. November I will focus on work.

The goal is not perfection. This is not the perfectionist project. This is about happiness. But I get a sincere thrill out of doing something well. Nothing is quite as satisfying. November also happens to be the busiest work month of the year for me. In November I put a grant pipeline together for the next fiscal (which for Opal Creek also happens to be calendar) year. I have several important grants to finish up before the end of the year. I get a newsletter put together and mailed to our member base. I craft and mail our a year-end appeal. I attend or contribute in some way to several board events. And this year I also happen to be in charge of the content and design for the newly recreated www.opalcreek.org AND our office just moved a week ago today. Phew! I'm honestly not overwhelmed . . . yet . . . but I definitely recognize the need to step up my game a little. I love my job and sincerely work hard with the organization's best interest in my heart. That said I sometimes allow myself to be so flummoxed at the sheer volume of work to be done that I find myself caught like a deer in headlights - completely inert and incapable of accomplishing anything. I just said I'm not overwhelmed, didn't I? Ha. I guess I lied. Maybe what I should've said is I'm not freaked out. I'm not in danger of losing my job. But overwhelmed. Yes, I'll admit that. It doesn't help that we've been in the new office space for a week and despite the fact we're paying out the nose for Ecotrust's IT services, our internet and server connections have yet to be established.

I'd so love to just rock this next month. It's been a tough year in the development world and grant money is down significantly right now. While this upsets me - I would've loved to bring in $100K in general operating money my first year on the job - I understand that the economy is beyond my control. I can only hold myself responsible for what is within my control. I saw a motivational slogan on Pinterest yesterday (one of the many poor workplace habits I've adopted - an uncanny addiction to Pinterest) that was geared toward physical fitness, but made sense in this light as well: You don't always get what you wish for, you get what you work for.

So my goals for November are:

1. utilize every minute of every work day.

I have a friend who recently graduated from law school and landed a job at a prestigious law firm downtown Portland. At a get together with some ladies this friend mentioned of her new job that her time was billed in 6 minute increments! This was a prick to my conscience. She has a computer system with a clock that times in 6 minute increments and her job performance reviews, salary increases and bonuses largely reflect her billable hours. I got to thinking: If I were to have to account for my time in this way, how embarrassed would I be? How much time, would I realize, do I waste?

I'm not going to break my day down into six minute increments. I am not a lawyer, I am an environmental non-profit grant writer and a certain amount of . . . hmmmm . . . laziness isn't the right word . . . is implicit in my world. We operate by tides and moons, not clocks. But that's not to say there isn't room for improvement. I think at the start of each work day I'll break my time into 90 minute increments, giving myself mini-deadlines and checking things off a list as I go.

2. initiate contact with other development professionals

At a recent Willamette Valley Development Officers meeting I sat next to a very friendly fellow development professional who has since pursued a professional development type friendship that I have neglected grossly. I have (and assume she does too) too much going on in my work day to carve out an hour in my week to get together to talk shop. But no one's stopping me from doing this on my own time. I find I've been stingy with the time I give my work in the past year. I made the mistake of figuring out my hourly wage and since we were able to hire a part time registrar a year ago and those responsibilities shifted from me to the person in this position, I've adopted a strict 9-5 schedule. Fine. But the only one who's suffering as a result is me. Overnight I went from working 9-10 frantic hours daily to just eight. With a lunch break. And a few minutes here or there to catch up with e-mail or Pinterest. Devoting a littel out of office time to work is only going to strengthen my credentials, improve my job performance, impress my boss and our governing board of directors. None of whom, I should mention, have the luxury of working just eight hour days.

3. efficiency, organization, pizzazz

And I think that'll do it for the work goals for now. I'll keep you posted on my progress. It seems important that I have some sort of grading rubric by which to assess my progress. This is still in the brain storming stage.

Like the Darkness Between the Fireflies

In a flurry of e-mails between me and a friend I haven't seen in a while, the decision was struck upon to start a writing group. Of sorts. I was mostly stoked about the Mason Jennings show I just went to and he was commenting on the lyrics I posted on my blog a few days back from Be Here Now. I offered to make him a disc of Mason stuff that I particularly love and he suggested making that our first assignment, "You make me a disc and I make you a disc and the writing assignment will be on thoughts of the disc received." Okay! And I added - write a little something about the music you're giving me too.

We have pretty different tastes in music. I pretend to be eclectic, but I really listen only to bluegrass, folk and Justin Timberlake. I'm also really sensitive about other folks liking the music I like. I'm a music snob, a la Rob, Dick and Barry in that hilarious scene from High Fidelity, which for some reason will not link to this page. You Tube it - High Fidelity, music snobs.

Nick Hornby, the same guy who wrote High Fidelity, wrote another book called Songbook. This work of non-fiction is an autobiography of sorts, where Hornby dissects his favorite songs, chapter by chapter, and relates them to specific times and anecdotes from his life. In the opening chapter he says,

"All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do."

I decided my disc of music would be entirely Mason Jennings. There are so many others I could include in an autobiographical cd of my life, songs that have meant so much to me over the years, Perry Como's Catch a Falling Star, The Beatles Only a Northern Song, Golden Slumbers, A Day in the Life and You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, Dave Matthews Band's #41, Elliott Smith's Angeles, Pete Yorn's Turn of the Century, Nickel Creek's Out of the Woods, Martha Scanlan's Seeds of the Pine, Smashing Pumpkins's Blew Away, The Shins's Pink Bullets, Wilco's Jesus, Etc., just about anything by the Punch Brothers, but especially I'm Yours if You Want Me, Stay Away, The Blind Leaving the Blind First and Second Movements, It'll Happen, This is the Song and Soon or Never . . . I could create a compendium of my life in song. It would be a strange mix of the melancholy and the magnanimous. But I'm not out to make an anthology, and were there one artist I could relate to every stage of my life, it would be Mason Jennings.

If you don't know Mason's music, please take the time to educate yourself. I've never experienced more stripped down, honest and moving music than what I've heard come from him since my first Mason show at the Aladdin Theater when I was visiting Portland for the very first time in 2004. I will always remember how he introduced Sorry Signs on Cash Machines: "You know those times in life when it seems like nothing else can go wrong? When your chest just doesn't contain your emotion and you're ready to break down? And then you walk up to an ATM only to find your checking account is overdrawn? This song is about those times. Take care of each other." And then he sang, "I won't let you give it up/with sorry sighs and forced bad luck/come on baby let's see what we're made of/I know true love don't look like anybody else."

So this is what I'll share with my newly minted writing group - my life in Mason lyrics:

Early childhood: my memories from early childhood are all good. They're the singing, white sand beaches and big waves of Lake Michigan, visits to and from Oma and Opa, raking leaves, whittling sticks, Lincoln's New Salem, hamburger soup, reading with mom in bed, sliding down the stairs in laundry baskets, bug hunts, tent building, walking everywhere hand in hand with daddy.

One Mason song comes to mind: Sunlight.

"underneath the lilac tree/I close my eyes and suddenly/I'm ten years old and running through/open fields chasing after you/sounds of summer fill my ears/if I live 10,000 years/I'll never feel as good as this/moments before our first kiss/there is nothing to demand/no algebra to understand/just sunlight on a freckled face/everything in its right place/simple things turn magical/minutes freeze like popsicles/and drip their seconds down our shirts/I love you so much it hurts/there's no such thing as real time/I've been yours and you've been mine/and we've been ever happily/everywhere I've been you've been with me/there is nothing to demand/no politics to understand/just sunlight on a freckled face/there is nothing to control/no question marks left on our souls/just sunlight on a freckled face/everything in its right place . . . "

Late childhood: this is where things get dicey. When I began to feel out of place in the church that was home for my family. Where I began to succumb to deep depressions when I grappled with what I actually believed compared with what I wanted to believe. And then people began dying and suddenly I was very much alone, realizing I was the only person in my immediate family, and in our church family, that had no real hope of seeing these people I cared about again. And man, did I ever try to believe. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I wrote these beautiful odes to Jesus, that detailed my affection and devotion and begged for belief. And it all exponentiated the depression to a fever pitch. I was even suicidal at one point when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. To make matters worse, I fell in love. And even now, as an adult, more or less, I think of this love as the only time in my life when I've truly been in love, and it's true what they say, "first loves die hard."

Three songs come to mind: 1. Jesus, Are You Real - because this is a song I sang in my heart everyday without having ever heard it.
2. Sorry Signs on Cash Machines - for my erstwhile love. "I know true love don't look like anybody else." I was convinced of it.
3. Southern Cross - this song reminds me of my dad. I think my losing my faith (or, quite possibly, just coming to grips with the fact I never had it to begin with) was very hard for him. Moving away from my parents was excruciating. All I could think about for the 9 months I lived in Spokane was how much I missed them. This song seems like a conversation between us. The bit about heading out early in the morning to surf reminds me of all the times dad would wake me up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. to head down to the beach in Michigan to talk and sometimes just sit quietly together:

"Trying to remember what I started this for/when a surfer friend of mine came and picked me up/and we paddled out as the sun was coming up/talking about how everybody's got to find/something that gives them the strength to stay alive/and out laying on our boards in the southern hemisphere he said to me/have some faith, have some faith/and I don't know what I want/but I know where I want to be/and everywhere I go/I wish you were here with me/stars hang on tiny strings/my dreams are made of memories/once everything made sense/now I get so alone that I can't sleep/somebody please tell me if this is where I'm supposed to be."

Early adulthood: I guess in my mind this begins when I moved home from Spokane and began going to school. I reconnected with my childhood friend (above) and found that I really resented how intact his faith was after all the years and all the shit we went through in our church. And then it fell apart and I began the painful process of extricating every last shred of it from my person, while he just skipped along to the next church, the next spiritual family, as if nothing had happened. I still remember a painful conversation that took place one evening while sitting on a beach down the street from my family's summer home in Michigan. "I don't believe it anymore," I finally admitted out loud. He might have been the first to hear it, and I felt the book close on that particular chapter of my life. Not too long after that I fell hard for another guy. A very unavailable guy. Who, sadly, fell for me too. And I decided after a while that I needed a change of pace. I moved to Chicago, but even from that distance, this was a difficult connection for me. It didn't help that he was supremely depressed most of the time and I felt this maternal instinct to rescue him from his lack luster relationship and his PTSD driven illusions and trepidation of death. And he got me. At least I think he did. And that was a first for me. I don't use the L word with him, but in a moment of weakness or drunkenness I might admit to it. So for these two men:

1. East of Eden -

"I'm just a student of this life just like my father/and I am a stranger to this heart just like my mother/oh and brother you should know/that this heart is filled with sadness and regret/but I'm learning as I go to forgive the things that I just can't forget . . . all of the wishes I once lost are now returning/all of the demons I have fought are slowly turning/oh and brother you should know there is no one in this world that feels no pain/but I'm learning as I go to accept the things that I've no power to change/all of these streets are heading out/this old song's no longer blue/although nothing's figured out/looks like we both made it through/if there were one thing I could ask/I would ask you where you've been/cause I still wonder where you were/when this whole big ship sank in."

2. Tourist -

"Is who you are now who you wanna be now?/or are you someone you don't wanna be?/is what you wanted what you really wanted?/or is it nothing like you dreamed?/honey there's a boat and it waits for us/somewhere there's a time and a place for us/it could be perfect if it wasn't for us/cause mama we're in love with a memory/a perfect dream of how it used to be/when our air was windy and our nights were free/there's a tourist in every heart [who] sees what he wants to see."

The Chicago years: it was some time during my last two years of college that I began to really recognize and put into practice what I now know to be true - that "most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." And I wanted to be happy. It helped that I had lain to rest the demons of my childhood. I was an atheist. I said it out loud. I didn't mince words. And that "peace in my heart that the world never gave" was suddenly there in spades. Turns out all I needed to do was accept who I was and what I believed. It was in my college years that I shared my love of Mason with my mom (we actually met him at an Italian restaurant before a show in Champaign one fall evening). She and I adopted the anthem "Be Here Now" as our own.

Then the sadness hit. A big part of why I chose to go to school in Chicago was to be closer to my Opa, my absolute favorite person in the world. He was 86 and dying slowly of congestive heart failure. That process sped up shortly after I moved to Chicago. Luckily, I was able to drive out to the suburbs pretty often, twice a month at least and sometimes more, to visit him. In his last year of life, he was full of grandfatherly wisdom and took every chance he got to sit me down on the couch and share it. And then, one beautiful spring morning, while I was sleeping off a hangover, right through my morning classes, I got a call from my Aunt and that was it. I took the Metra to the Orange Line to Midway Airport, where my Uncle Jeff picked me up to go to the hospital. He was dead when the paramedics responded to my Oma's frantic 9-1-1 call, but without the DNR on hand, they resuscitated him, which was horrible, but at least gave me the chance to say goodbye to him while he was still breathing. At one point during the 8 hours we sat in that room waiting for him to stop breathing, I was left alone with him for a few minutes. I took the opportunity to sing Mason's "If You Need a Reason" in his ear:

"Lovely, lovely quiet lake/how could this be a mistake?/too dark now to see your face/your hair's blowing all over the place/the moon is caught in a frozen glass/we could not let this moment pass/the sun is waiting far away/till I had the chance to say/all that's missing, all that's lost/every hope at any cost/every dream too good to come true/floods my heart when I'm with you/if you need a reason as to why you're here you don't need to look further than me."

And then I begged him to stop breathing, and eventually he did. I was holding his hand.

In summary - Chicago years: 1. Be Here Now
2. If You Need a Reason

Portland/Now: Man. I'm happy here. I think some people spend their lives looking for the place they fit. That feels more like home than home. I found it at 24. I'm the lucky one. That's not to say there wasn't an adjustment period. I was lonely for about a year, and still am sometimes, so the first song I'd put in the now category is Lonely Road.

Next I would go for Which Way Your Heart Will Go. Bekah and I had a conversation a week ago about how our lives would look if we hadn't made some of the decisions and mistakes we made. And I really feel like my failures, just as much as my achievements, have brought me to this place. So I'm thankful for both of them.

"Where would I be right now if all my dreams had come true?/deep down I know somehow I'd have never seen your face/this world would be a different place/darling there's no way to know/which way your heart will go."

It's a melancholy song, but it's not depressing, exactly, it's reflective. And I'm a reflector. Uh, or a reflective type of person, rather.

Next up - Darkness Between the Fireflies. Because I'm over the past and happy in the present and I don't want to look back too much and certainly don't want to be too caught up in the future. Plus it was one of the very first songs I learned to play on guitar and I'm quite fond of it.

And to sum it all up, Boneclouds, because it ties up everything and includes my love of nature.

"Wind blowing through the trees, branches bend, light shines through/I am so far from where I began when I was young/morning's breaking, I can hear birds singing and I feel like I'm never gonna die/life is looming and the summer's blooming and I feel like I'm never gonna die/I feel like I'm never gonna die/boneclouds of ghostly white rattle through skies of blue/send my heart on a train racing to something new/morning's breaking I can hear birds singing and I feel like I'm never gonna die/life is looming and the summer's blooming and I feel like I'm never gonna die/I feel like I'm never gonna die."

Today on his facebook page Mason wrote, "Talking about songwriting with friends and interviewers lately has gotten me thinking: Songwriting to me feels much less like making something than it feels like finding something. It is the two fold act of finding or being given something and caring for it very deeply. Then the third (and separate) part is sharing it and letting it go where it wants to go and is needed."

I was trying to think of a non-creepy way of sharing with him just how much his music has meant to me over the last eight years. And what it's meant to the folks with whom I've shared it. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I said nothing much. I did invite him to Pickathon (unofficially, of course) and asked him to play Sorry Signs on Cash Machines the next time he plays Portland. I said "thank you" for the show he just played. And I left. And I can't wait to see him play again.

Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me

It seems to me in order to identify what makes me happy, I ought to know myself pretty well. Really well, actually. I embarked on this quest long before I decided to do this happiness project but I've recommitted to it recently, understanding it to be important to the process. It all started with a gift card for an intuitive reading. I filled in at a meeting for a colleague and as a thank you he purchased an hour long session with a woman named Debbie Shley. After a few scheduling snafus, Debbie and I got together one Friday afternoon in August.

I had determined to give her nothing ahead of time. If she wanted to sell me on the idea of intuitive readings, she'd really have to work for it. My e-mails to her were succinct and dry. I didn't use expressive punctuation. I removed the automatic signature at the bottom of my e-mails that told her I was running a marathon with TNT. I didn't talk about my work schedule. I gave her nothing.

When I arrived at her home in Ladd's Addition I had no idea what to expect. A turban? A crystal ball? Cards? Mood music? Incense? A velvet covered chaise lounger? My coworker, who knew I was heading out for this appointment, encouraged me to just relax and enjoy it. "Don't be a bitch," she chided. "Worse case scenario - she's a complete quack and you get a chuckle out of it all when you look back on it." Good point, I thought and I did just that. I relaxed my mind's muscle and began thinking more freely. One thing I've learned in my years as a recovering Christian is close mindedness gets me nowhere. So why was I so skeptical of this experience? No, I didn't expect Debbie to have any incredible insights into my psyche, but for years I'd been wishing I could afford to go to therapy - not so much because I am traumatized and in need of shrinking, but rather because I love to talk about myself - so at the very least, this was an opportunity to spend an hour discussing my favorite topic: me.

Debbie's home overlooked one of the rose gardens grown within the turnabouts on the confusing diagonal grid of streets that make up Ladd's. We sat in a second floor bedroom, looking out at the sunshine and the flowers and she took a deep breath, paused (for dramatic effect, I thought smugly) and then said, "Do you know why I rescheduled a couple weeks back? It wasn't because I was unwell." I gave her a "I have no idea and am not terribly interested" shrug of the head and she said, "I couldn't get a read on you. You're quite the caged off cynic!" I gave out a quick, awkward and a bit too loud, "HA!" She had me pegged already - after all my hard work to disguise myself, or perhaps because of it. "It wasn't until about 3:18 p.m. this afternoon that I finally started getting anything from you at all." And that was right about the time Mindy chided me to loosen up and enjoy the experience. Weird.

Our session ended up lasting for two full hours - it was really incredible. After she sat there and told me about myself for 45 minutes the questions started pouring out of me (Along with the tears, I'm ashamed to admit - but! She kept encouraging me to allow myself to be sad [see Rules By Which to Live] and boy did I ever!).

She asked me if I'd ever taken the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test, and why yes, I had, just a couple weeks prior with my roommates as we sat around the kitchen table late one evening. She encouraged me to pick up the book Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types to learn more about myself, an INTJ. The entry says:

INTJs are the most self-confident of all the types, having "self-power" awareness. Found in about 1 percent of the general population, the INTJs live in an introspective reality, focusing on possibilities, using thinking in the form of empirical logic, and preferring that events and people serve some positive use. Decisions come naturally to INTJs; once a decision is made, INTJs are at rest. INTJs look to the future rather than the past, and a word which captures the essence of INTJs is builder - a builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models.

To INTJs, authority based on position, rank, title, or publication has absolutely no force. This type is not likely to succumb to the magic of slogans, watchwords or shibboleths. If an idea or position makes sense to an INTJ, it will be adopted; it if doesn't, it won't, regardless of who took the position or generated the idea. As with the INTP, authority per se does not impress the INTJ.

INTJs do, however, tend to conform to rules if they are useful, not because they beleive in them, or because they make sense, but because of their unique view of reality. They are the supreme pragmatists, who see reality as something which is quite arbitrary and made up. Thus is can be used as a tool. Or ignored. Reality is quite malleable and can be changed, conquered, or brought to heel. Reality is a crucible for the refining of ideas, and in this sense, INTJs ar the most theoretical of all the types. INTJs see reality as the pawn of ideas: no idea is too far-fetched to be entertained. INTJs are natural brain-stormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them.

INTJs have a drive to completion, always wit an eye to long-term consequences. Ideas seem to carry their own force for INTJs, although they subject every idea to the test of usefulness. Difficulties are highly stimulating to INTJs, who love responding to a challenge that requires creativity.

INTJs can be very single-minded at times; this can be either a weakness or a strength in their careers, for they can ignore the points of view and wishes of others. INTJs usually rise to positions of responsibility, for they work long and hard and are steady in their pursuit of goals, sparing neither time nor effort on their part or that of their colleagues and employees. INTJs live to see systems translated into substance.

As mates, INTJs want harmony and order in the home and in relationships. They are the most independent of all the types. They will trust their intuitions about others when making choices of friends and mates, even in the face of contradictory evidence and pressures applied by others. The emotions of an INTJ are hard to read, and neither male nor female INTJ is apt to express emotional reactions. At times, both will seem cold, reserved, and unresponsive, while in fact INTJs are almost hypersensitive to signals of rejection from those for whom they care.

The most important preference of an INTJ is intuition, but this is seldom seen. Rather, the function of thinking is used to deal with the world and with people. INTJs are vulnerable in the emotional area and may make serious mistakes here.

Yep. That's me. Almost to a tee. I'm more emotional than this description lets on, but as Debbie said, "Categorize a person like this and you're bound to chop off a few fingers and toes here and there." And she pointed out that just because I feel emotions strongly doesn't mean they're apparent on the outside, which is more what this description is saying. "Allow yourself to be sad sometimes, Kristina! It must be exhausting to walk around smiling the way you do!" Yep, this is me, for better or worse.

My two hours with Debbie were emotional, but strangely not exhausting. I was on my way to Opal Creek for the weekend and she encouraged me to store all our conversation away and just get out into nature and allow myself to recharge. "That I didn't get intuitively," she said, with a little twinkle in her eye, "I know you work for Opal Creek and Dave told me you are quite the devotee to the cause. You wouldn't be if nature weren't restorative for you - that's the INTJ in you!"

So off I went and had the most beautiful weekend I've ever had in Opal Creek in the three years I've worked there.

Reluctantly Crouched at the Starting Line

Do you remember the Cake song The Distance? Or have you ever even heard it? It was a favorite of mine back in the day.

I've got a couple weeks yet to pull this all together and get going. I guess I can't say I'm reluctantly crouched at the starting line, more like I'm expectantly crouched at the starting line, but that's just a small detail.

I'm trying to identify the categories of my happiness project. I know I want to start with a work focus, but what comes next?

I told Deb about the project and the book Sunday afternoon. We sat in the kitchen and chatted about it for a while - she was pretty enthusiastic for me. "But I don't know what I should focus on throughout the different months," I said. Without missing a beat, she said, "Oh! You should have a Sunny month!" I felt myself bristle. For some reason I'm very sensitive to criticism where my dog is concerned. Not that there isn't room for improvement, au contraire! It's just unpleasant to have my weak "parenting" skills brought to my attention, especially by my roommate who arguably has the most annoying cat on the face of this fine planet! But once I got over being offended, I realized that a Sunny month would actually be a brilliant idea.

Sunshine, my almost 10 year old lab/boxer/god-only-knows mix, is a very sweet old lady. I've had her since the summer before my senior year in high school. She's been everywhere with me since then. To Spokane after my high school graduation and back to Illinois again 9 months later, up to my first apartment in Chicago, on to my second apartment in Chicago, up to Michigan with me countless times, on extended backpacking trips, on day hikes, on runs, on to Portland after college graduation, up and down Mt. Tabor with me every morning for a year before she tore her ACL - she's been my constant companion for 9+ years. Some people have significant others or best friends, I have Sunshine. Some people have a FWB they snuggle up to on cold nights. I have a Smelly Sweet Potato.

Before I go on, I should mention Sunny has several names, all of which she responds to (as much as she responds to her real name, which is not that often/consistently): Sunshine, Sunny, Sunny-Bunny, Smelly Sweet Potato, Shitzky Britches, Stinks/Stinky/Stinky Beans, Miss Pretty, Lady, Monkey and Pierre. She has two bad hips and a very distinguished mustache these days. And a truckload of annoying habits.

1. She wakes me up whenever she feels like eating in the morning, usually before 5 a.m. I used to feed her in the evening, but I was home at such inconsistent times in the evenings that often my roommates would feed her because she would pester them when I couldn't be found at her usual feeding time. This confused her. She didn't quite know who she belonged to. It didn't help that she played musical beds and that my house was in a constant state of flux, with folks moving in and out every couple months. She began behaving badly. When I began insisting she sleep in my room and receive her food from me, exclusively, a lot of this behavior cleared up. But she's incrementally pushed up her feeding time over the months. At about 4 a.m. she begins nudging me. When I roll over she jumps out of bed and comes around the side to stick her cold nose in my face. When that doesn't work she begins to whine. And when that doesn't work, she gives a low, throaty bark. Right in my face. Yep. Not exactly desirable. I know it takes exactly 7 minutes for me to feed her, let her out to go to the bathroom, and be back in bed, so I usually cave. But by then the damage has been done, I'm awake. And I have a really hard time going back to sleep and, when I finally do, sometimes an entire hour or so later, I have an even harder time waking up.

desired behavior: Sunny gets up when my alarm clock goes off, at a more respectable hour, like seven o'clock.

2. She chases Puddle, and generally scares the crap out of her. I've excused this behavior because, I reason, at least she has no intention of hurting Puddle, she just wants to sniff her for a while, maybe lick her butt. But Deb doesn't like it and Puds certainly doesn't either.

desired behavior: She entirely ignores Puddle. Or at the very least responds to me telling her to stay when I'm letting Puddle in/out.

3. She sleeps in my bed and generally feels entitled to every soft surface in the house.

desired behavior: *She sleeps on her pillow.

*I should mention I don't really want this. I love snuggling with Sunny. But it seems like the adult thing to expect of her. Or, I know some dogs that only get in bed/on couches when invited, which would be best.

4. She sheds EVERYWHERE, in big tufts I refer to as Sunny Tumbleweeds. That and she has really itchy skin and scratches herself a lot. That and she doesn't smell great.

desired behavior: She learns some basic housekeeping/common decency/personal hygiene and begins sweeping up after herself, practicing self-control and bathing more frequently.

realistically: I get better about grooming her - a chore I loathe.

5. She annoys people by begging/nudging them. All the time. But especially when they're eating.

desired behavior: She responds to the command, "Go away" or "Pillow."

Okay, so there will be a Sunny month.

This Whole World Keeps Changing - Come Change with Me!

What a great idea, right? And I'm not going to wait for the New Year to start because I want to start right now. I read a few lines from Gretchen's (yes, we are on a first name basis) book to Bekah last week while she made a chocolate cheesecake in her lovely kitchen soon to be abandoned by her and D-Mac for the even rainier (!), sleepy town of Astoria. She amused me but didn't seem too into the idea. I was kind of trolling for a partner in crime. Alas, I'll have to look elsewhere. It's an experiment, I'm allowed to fail. Rule #1. Because if I try a thousand things that don't bring me happiness, like Thomas Edison said, I will at least know 1,000 things that don't work (to bring happiness for me, to serve as a filament for him).

So, some background: Gretchen Rubin is the author of The Happiness Project - Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to SIng in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. She identified 11 major areas of her life from which she felt she could cull more happiness and set about methodically tackling each area, one per month, saving December for a "bring it all together" time of reflection. Throughout the process she cultivated a list of truths (I'm working on my own) and another list of commandments (she chose 12, I'm having trouble getting there) that she felt held validity when applied to each of her 11 areas of endeavor. And then she went for it.

I started the process by lining my apple slices up on my windowsill, putting on a chunky knit sweater and slippers and putting pen to paper - throwing down ideas onto a list I initially called Ideas to Live By, which is grammatically incorrect. And since grammatical correctness is important to me, I decided that rather than be sheepish about how anal I am about grammar, I would amend the title of my list to Ideas by which to Live. But there's nothing happy sounding about that. So let's just call it Stuff for now. This is incomplete. I might yet add to it, might strike out a few things. I'll hopefully solidify the contents before starting month #1 on November 1st.

Ideas by Which to Live
1. Failure is inevitable. And it's okay.
2. When everyone else goes home, I have to live with myself.
3. If it feels good, do it. Just don't bitch about the consequences later.
4. When in doubt, wear the cowboy boots.
5. Know who you are. Be who you know yourself to be.
6. I am surprisingly resilient.
7. "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln
8. Take time to be alone.
9. Clean the sheets before the weekend.
10. Allow yourself to be sad sometimes.

I then brainstormed a list of things that bring me happiness:

health/energy/fitness professional development time management forests organization being a friend snail mail ceramics paper-cutting flower arranging feeling/being prepared writing playing guitar and singing running family listening to music being outside decorating reading sex yoga biking hiking cooking gardening eating out being alone/quiet reconnecting my dog feeling adequate volunteering investing in myself trying new things swinging scarves windows down/heat on clean sheets/shaved legs TNT hot chocolate walking looking nice outdoor markets the beach traveling clothes shopping visiting art and natural history museums

When I got home from work on Friday I turned my phone off and settled in with Gretchen's book and my notebook and began crafting more specifics of my project. I identified the area with the greatest potential and need for improvement, my starting point: work. The goal is not perfection. This is not the perfectionist project. This is about happiness. But I get a sincere thrill out of doing something well. Nothing else is quite as satisfying. I wrote at the top of my notebook page - November: Anything worth doing is worth doing well. And November also happens to be the busiest work month of the year for me. In November I put a grant pipeline together for the coming fiscal year. I have several important grants to finish up before the end of the year. I get a newsletter put together and mailed to our member base. I craft and mail out a year-end appeal for funding. I attend or contribute in some way to several board events. I attend professional development workshops. And this year I also happen to be in charge of launching our new website and moving our office. Phew!

I wrote out a long list of work related goals and aspirations and went to bed about midnight, determined to wake early, grab a coffee (a weekend only luxury) and trek up Mt. Tabor - one of my favorite, long neglected, morning habits. I was pretty pleased with myself.

I'm a generally happy person. I wake up most days with a smile on my face, in a good mood. I know that one's level of happiness is largely determinant on genetics and I've just been blessed in that way. I guess I don't anticipate this project increasing my happiness, per se, but rather helping me relish it more. But I also am a little obsessed with happiness. The pursuit and acquisition of happiness, to be exact. I'm particularly interested in the maintenance of happiness when life throws little curve balls at me, or, as a friend said at lunch on Friday, "when life serves me shit burgers." On Saturday morning, life served me a shit burger.

I had this strange dream early Saturday morning that I was heading downtown on my bike, on a beautiful fall day, (a rare occasion in Portland, but not unlike today, actually) when I felt a lurch, looked down and noticed I had a flat tire. In my dream, one flat tire did not necessitate dismounting and turning back, so I continued on. Soon enough I felt the same lurch again and looked back. My rear tire had flattened too. "Son of a -," I got off my bike, by this time I was at the bottom of the 20 block long Salmon Street hill, and turned for home, dispirited and irritated that I had a huge incline to surmount before getting home.

I woke up from this dream, just one of three incredibly vivid, strange dreams I had that morning, and immediately began dissecting it for meaning. It was gray and cold outside - nothing like the beautiful day of my dream. But I almost immediately remembered a friend's wedding that was happening that day - a wedding that I couldn't attend, for reasons both personal and geographic, and represented the end of an emotional era for me, so to speak. "Flat tire #1," I thought to myself. I wonder what #2 will be?

It occurred to me that I might swap my planned trip up Tabor in exchange for a trek downtown to the PSU Farmer's Market and I picked up my phone to text Bekah to see if she was planning on going too. One of my favorite sisterly bonding activities is meeting Bekah at the Spunky Monkey coffee cart in the middle of the market and then wandering around. She always buys her produce from Groundworks Organics because I think the guy that runs the stand is cute. I always resolve to buy actual produce but usually end up going home with nothing but flowers. It's a lovely tradition. She texted me back: "I need to talk to you real quick. Call me." Weird, I thought, but I called her right away. "I have to tell you something," she said. She paused, I waited. The next word out of her mouth, I knew what she was going to tell me, because her voiced cracked with emotion and Bekah is not a particularly emotional person. "I miscarried my baby."

As if on queue, the hardships surfaced not twelve hours after I made all these lofty goals for the start of my happiness project. Not that this is about me. At all. But flat tire #2, with an asterisk.

I can't have children myself and truthfully have never really liked them much, but when Bekah called me to share her news while I sat on the lawn at McMenamin's Edgefield waiting for a Decemberists show to start the evening before my birthday, it felt like a present. At the farmer's market the next morning we began discussing names. They wanted to name a child after a historical person of great character (cool) and had already decided on Theodore for a boy. I pointed out that given we are from Springfield, IL and that Lincoln was arguably the best president we've ever had anyway, Lincoln would be a much better name. They thought Lincoln was too trendy though. "I don't know any kids named Lincoln," I said, but then again, I only know two kids right now. I acquiesced. (Acquiesced? Ha!)

They, as far as I knew, hadn't reached a decision on a girl's name though and I offered the following suggestions:

Irena - after Irena Sendler, the Polish Catholic woman who started Zegota, an underground organization that placed thousands of Jewish children in Catholic homes to save them from the ghettos and camps. And Irena means serenity or absolute peace.

Josephine - after the literary character, Josephine March. So not a historical figure, but my favorite from fiction. And Josephine means "she shall increase in wisdom." I can't help but wonder if Louisa May Alcott knew that when she wrote Jo's character. She must have.

Rose - after Rose Valland, the French art enthusiast and Louvre employee who single-handedly made records of every work of art as it was squirreled away into the French countryside to keep it out of the hands of Hitler and his treasure-pirating henchmen. Her records are the reason that museum was reconfigured so successfully after the war.

Amelia - obvious, maybe, but any baby born to an Oldani is destined to be a bad ass, just like THE Amelia. Plus it means industrious and independent.

These are women after whom I would proudly name my own children.

I hiked up Mt. Tabor and sat there in the cold as long as I could. I could see my breath. From where I sat, looking west toward downtown Portland, it was so foggy that I couldn't even see down to the bottom of the hill. I determined to incorporate regular ambles up Tabor as part of my happiness project. Then I headed down to face the music, see my sister and wish her husband a happy birthday despite everything.

Saturday evening I went to a Mason Jennings show with M. Mason has such a beautiful way of weaving melancholia into rousing anthems touching on humanity in the most uncannily accurate and piercing way. A la U2, but, you know, not cheesy. I wanted to hear Sorry Signs on Cash Machines, because I wanted to feel sad and sorry for myself and feel those haunting lyrics wash over me, making my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach. Instead, he played Be Here Now.

"Be here now/no other place to be/all the doubts that linger/just set them free/and let good things happen/let the future come/into each moment/like a rising sun . . . sun comes up and we start again/it's all new today/all we have to say/is be here now. Be here now/no other place to be/this whole world keeps changing/come change with me/everything that's happened/all that's yet to come/is here inside this moment/it's the only one."

And then I got to meet him.

Two Weeks. Two weeks?? TWO WEEKS!!

Yes. That was exactly my train of thought today when I opened my calendar to put in a grant draft deadline and saw my weekly countdown for this coming Sunday. I feel like it's important that I update this at least once more before the marathon to paint a rosier picture than I have been recently. Because, contrary to what this blog may portray, I really love running. That's (partly) why I am doing this.

I've had two solid weekend runs since I last updated. One 16 miler, one 20. Minimal to no pain in my left leg. Decent pace. I felt good.

My whole goal of refocusing, remembering why I am doing this, re-prioritizing, I can't claim to be perfect or completely selfless in my endeavor, but I feel like I am finally developing some peripheral vision. TNT connects each team with an honored teammate. One of ours showed up for the start of our 20 miler last weekend. Four-year-old Zach was exactly the impetus I needed to make it through those 20 miles. This is so much bigger than me, or my goal, or my leg - this is about a whole team who has been affected by cancer in some way. Who wants to do more than just cringe and look away when faced with the horrors of life. Together we have raised over $74,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. That money goes directly to the medical care and morale of people who are battling a blood cancer and to the research that is working steadily toward a cure.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. I bought a journal with that quote on the front the year I graduated from high school, when I was living in Spokane.

The thought hits me like a ton of bricks: am I an individual? Do I thrive on thought? Or do I merely go through life as a spectator, never being bold enough to choose sides, afraid on the one hand to look like everyone else, and on the other to think like everyone else. Ultimately, to be on the wrong side.

I think journaling portrays me in an unfair light. Not to my disadvantage, but rather in support of a strength of character that in all honesty hasn't surfaced anywhere but on paper. Someday, someone's going to read my thoughts and think, "Wow, what an awesome mind - who thinks of these things?" My answer to that person is, to you if you're reading this, I'm not an awesome person, but instead a coward because I was never able to be open with humanity the way I've been open in my journal. You are capable of the same thoughts, you just don't realize your own potential until you have a pen in hand and an empty sheet of paper. I would like to add that the most original thought doesn't count unless expressed somewhere other than a hidden journal.

My noblest thoughts are no more than that, thoughts. I haven't acted on a single noble thought since I've been here. Well, I donate a few bucks a week to the United Way, but giving money is a cop-out. True giving requires more physical exertion than signing a piece of paper. I've talked about volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club but have yet to actually spend a single hour in one of the local clubs. I got close to becoming a big sister but find I can't make the year long commitment they ask for. The thought that in a year's time I may be sitting in this bed, this room, this house, this city, writing in a journal makes my outlook on life considerably bleaker than I ever thought possible. Do I really want to move home? I don't think I do . . . but I'm restless. I tried to run away from my problems knowing full well that my problems would follow me wherever I ran.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." Something made me choose this journal over the others at Boo Radley's. I really want to make a difference. Any one person who could say, "my life is better because of Kristina Hope Oldani" would make my life worth living. What changes do I wish to see in the world? That's a start. What changes do I wish to see in Spokane? A more practical one. I want people to be less skeptical of the differences between them. So that means I need to treat Amy's hick friends as I would like them to treat the minorities in the area. I want some unloved, unfulfilled child to find a skill and discover a potential buried by poverty, abuse, lack of support. That means I need to take the plunge, make the commitment to be here for a year. That also means that my own skill, however underdeveloped, needs to be realized. I think of myself as being talentless, that simply isn't true. I have something to offer. That isn't pride, it's humility. I'm going to call Big Brothers Big Sisters tomorrow. I can make it for a year. Someone needs me more than I need my mommy.

-Thursday, October 23rd, 2003

I never did become a big sister in Spokane. In fact, I'd completely forgotten I even wanted to at the time until re-reading that just now. And I've been a "big" for a little over a month now. I think some things get into your system and just fester there until the time is right for them to bloom out.

I was 19 when I wrote that. I wasn't in school. I had no community there. That was a year of me getting to know myself, work through some serious depression, and hike, hike, hike. But it's wonderful to read that now and see how far I've come. How happy I am! Jeez! I was so depressed then! And incredibly self-preoccupied. Goodness. But I was losing my faith and living alone and away from my family for the first time in my life. I was allowed. And these journals give me such an incredible bench mark by which to gage my progress in life.

I'm human. It's a relief, really. That reminder from time to time.

But these reminders come with a great deal of questioning and obsessive thought resulting in feeling wide awake at 4 o'clock in the morning when I want nothing more than to sleep.

Khalfani and I are trying to organize a screening of Invisible Children at LUMA to coincide with a Push Pin show of Ugandan art. A week ago we sat down to start discussing logistics. I ordered the dvd. When I got home from work tonight it was in my mailbox so I decided to watch it.

I now have this sense of urgency. The kind that prevents me from pursuing business as usual. I have to do something, and I have to do it yesterday.

When you become aware of the world around you, the war in Uganda that displaces thousands of children each night, the squalor and poverty right here in America, all of a sudden everything else seems so self-serving and insignificant: majoring in art history, taking a backpacking trip to Alaska, going to furniture building school. I don't begrudge Americans their comfortable lives but I also don't think I could ever be satisfied turning a blind eye. With gift comes responsibility and I've been given this gift of a sensitive soul.

-February 1st, 2008

It was always important to me to be a doer. And I wasn't one naturally. But it's as simple as a decision, turns out. And for the record, I now know, having worked in development for a few years, how untrue it was of me to say, "giving money is a cop-out." Money is usually the greatest need.

But going through this process of training for a marathon, devoting so much time and effort and working through the triumphs and disappointments, this is the experience I needed to feel like I was "doing" something. Being the change I wished to see in the world.

I don't know why I include these journal entries on my blog. I'm really not trying to toot my own horn, I just can't begin to tell you the experience of reading these things and thinking about the events in my life that have had an impact and where they've brought me today.

In two weeks I'll run the Eugene Marathon. Knowing me, I'll not sleep at all the night before and be a tired bundle of nerves at the starting line. I don't know whether or not I'll cross the finish line in under four hours. I'm trying to decide that's of little importance. I'm sure I'll cry at the finish line. I'm sure I'll think of Uncle Jeff the whole way. I'll think of Ani in Argentina, of Aunt Linda in Chicago, of Alek in Princeton, and I'll think of my own dad, who left me this message today:

Hey sweetie, I just wanted to let you know that Don Walker died yesterday. I know that's not good news. But the good news is that I love you very much and I'm looking forward to the next time I get to see you.

I'll think of how Linda, Alek and Anika won't get any messages like that from Uncle Jeff anymore. And I'll be incredibly grateful that my dad doesn't have Acute Myloid Leukemia. I'll be hopeful that the money I've raised, that my team's raised and the entire OSWIM chapter, through all its various events this year has raised will help a family just like mine. Maybe save someone else's Uncle Jeff from a shortened life.

I'll think of this card that they brought with when they came here to visit Bekah and me last summer.

Dear Rebekah, Dear Kristina,

When people asked me why we were going to Portland, I would tell them we were going to visit my beloved nieces. Then I would proceed to tell them how the two of you came to take care of us the days after Jeff died, and how you knew what to do at every turn. You both took such great care of us, you knew when to help and when to stay back - you both always knew exactly how to help. And though I know you are adults, you are both still so young and it was amazing how you were able to help the three of us through those trying days. We will always be grateful that you came to our rescue. We love you both so much, and that was also true of Uncle Jeff, who was so touched by your cards, packages and calls. He felt very close to you both.

We are so happy to visit you here at your homes in Portland, we all love being with the both of you.

Love,
Alek, Anika & Linda

If everyone had a family as wonderful as mine, they would understand this. How I'm running this marathon for them. How much I love them. How trying and horrible yet magical this past year has been.

On a lighter note:

Looking forward to (besides the obvious): Iron & Wine on May 31st; tapering; the next marathon [Portland, October 9th, 2011]; Virginia Beach in June; August (& Everything After)

Also maybe hearing this line from Rabbit Will Run at the Iron & Wine show : I've furthered the world in my wake.

There is still time to give.
http://pages.teamintraining.org/oswim/eugene11/koldani