Tag Archives: rebuilding

Progress, Not Perfection

5 Replies

Yesterday’s post was about practice, and we all know:  

Practice Makes _________

Go ahead, say it:  “Practice Makes Perfect.”

And we alllllll know the very idea of “perfect” is utter bullshit.  But we make ourselves crazy with the pursuit of perfection anyway.  (I’m looking at you, Pinterest.)

So I’ve been trying to think of a new slogan.  Which do you prefer?

  1. Practice Makes Incremental Changes That Will Lead You Toward Your Better Self  (that’s never going to fit on a tshirt–maybe a beach towel)
  2. Practice Makes You a Little Less Awful at That (nope, too negative)
  3. Practice Makes Progress
Progress

My perfect life is still buffering…

That’s IT!  Practice makes progress.  My therapist is always saying “Progress, not perfection.”  Chasing progress is a healthy thing; chasing perfection will make you crazy as a betsy bug.  I was going to say “crazy as a shithouse rat” but I am working on my potty mouth and how’s THAT for progress?  Practicing what I’m preaching.

Here’s a funny example of how years of practice can pay off in emotional progress.  Just the other morning, I woke from a dream of Fartbuster.  Now, back in the days of our divorce, I would dream of Fartbuster and inevitably, he would cheat on me in my dream and I would experience feelings of panic and betrayal and confusion.  I would wake with a dark cloud of emotional pain hanging over me and it would stick with me for the day.  Not only had I been dumb enough to fall for his shit…stuff…in real life, but now I was falling for it again in my dreams!  Bad me, bad me, bad me.  I deserved to feel bad.  What was it George W. Bush said?  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice…uh…won’t get fooled again.”

Cut forward through 12 years of therapy, a lot of internal work, some rebuilding and the love of a couple of good men.

So the other night I dreamed about Fartbuster.  We were married and I discovered signs that he was cheating.  Oh, OK, to tell the truth because it was just a dream and it was really funny–the sign was that he was lying in bed next to me and he had athletic tape wrapped around his butt cheeks.  That white kind you use to tape up a twisted ankle?  So I said, “What is THAT?” and he goes, “Oh, that’s for a scene I’m filming.”   Ah.  Aha.  Ahem.

Now, in the dream, what did I do?  Did I rend my sackcloth and coat my hair with ashes?  Did I cry and scream and give him five across the eyes?  Did I roll down the staircase or wail, “Where shall I go?  What shall I do?”

Nope.  I got out of the bed, gathered my things and said, “Yep, that’s just the way he is.  Buh-bye.”  Woke up laughing.

I’ve practiced the Fartbuster scenario a LOT.  Finally, my real life skills are leaking into my dreams, I guess.  Even in my sleep, I’m getting better at saying, “That wasn’t about me.  Better let it go.”  PRACTICE.

Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Nothing makes perfect.  What could perfect be in that scenario…not ever having the dream?  Maybe.  But then I wouldn’t have woken with that laugh.  Athletic tape on his hairy ass–that’s going to smart coming off.  

David Beckham in kinesio tape

Hold up. I may have to rethink my disdain for athletic tape…

What’s your definition of progress?  

The Secret of the Five S’s

15 Replies

mr-rightHere’s a GREAT piece of advice my mom shared with me when I was divorced from Fartbuster and starting to date again.  It’s known as “The Five S’s.”   That is blatant misuse of an apostrophe to try to make a plural, so let’s spell out the name of the letter “Ess” then make it a plural…Esses.  But after that glass of wine (and the one before it) that comes out more like Essesssessess.

With the Five Essesses, it’s all or nothing.  Whether I was scouting around for a Friday night date or a life partner, I had to make sure he fit ALL FIVE of these criteria:

SINGLE:  Well, duh.  Though Fartbuster didn’t let marriage stop him from dating.  When we were separated, I got “approached” by a married man.  I said, “Good grief.  I’ve already got ONE cheating husband in my life–why would I want someone else’s too?”

STRAIGHT:  If you’re straight, that is.  If you’re gay, they should be gay, too.  I’ve spent some time dating members of The Other Team and it’s fun while it lasts–especially when there was dancing involved–but it’s not going to pan out over the long term.

SANE:  This one takes a little looking around under the hood.  Do they have long term friendships?  Can they be alone?  Can they be in company?  Is their past littered with broken relationships?  Is everyone “out to get them?”  Any arrest records…and why?  How do they treat things that are smaller and sweeter than themselves?

SOBER:  I don’t care if you’re a drinker, a tee-totaler, in recovery or allergic to gin–as long as you are in charge of it.

SOLVENT:  I’m not saying wealthy.  Just solvent.  Bills are paid.  Living within your means.  Not going to ruin my credit score by association.

It took me a while to find Richard (all 5, no question) and then another while to find G (all 5, plus the Secret S:  Sexy Accent).  Along the way I met some other Esses:  Skint, Stalker, Snoopy, Stressy, Skoal, Stupid, Stingy, Swagger, Slob.  

So in hindsight….Fartbuster?  Single.  Straight.  Sober.  A little weak on solvent and a lot weak on sane.  And there was the sixth S:  skank.

A Ship In Harbor

11 Replies
East Cottage at Linekin Bay Resort

East Cottage at Linekin Bay Resort

This cozy spot is at Linekin Bay Resort, a magical place in Maine where Richard and I took our last vacation together.  We had come there to sail–Richard had fond memories of a week his family had spent there when he was a kid.  At Linekin Bay, “all-inclusive” means a room with a view, world class dining AND a 16′ sailboat of your own and lessons each day, out on the waters of Booth Bay.  Weather permitting.

Nine years ago this week, I was sitting in one of those spindly chairs doing an ancient jigsaw puzzle atop that table by the window.  Richard took a nap.  The puzzle was missing a few pieces but assembling it under the quaint yellow light from that lamp soothed my cabin fever.  Incessant rain pelted the balsam trees outside.  A cold June fog settled in so thick that we couldn’t see Cabbage Island.

I had read both books that I had packed for a two week trip.  There were no TVs at Linekin.  No pool table or XBox.  The resort offered many activities–sailing, kayaking, canoeing, swimming, lobster bakes, hiking…weather permitting.  We had already gone shopping in the nearby towns.  Richard wasn’t usually one for sleeping, but that was about all there was to do.  We didn’t know that his energy was so low because of the leukemia.  I read, he slept.  I did puzzles, he slept.  We ate lobster for lunch and dinner.  He cracked and peeled mine for me because I found it ooky yet delicious.

Linekin Bay Boats

Linekin Bay Boats

The resort’s fleet of twenty sailboats lay moored just past the dock, but invisible in the fog.  I cracked the side window an inch so I could listen to the music of the halyards ringing against the masts.  A halyard is the rope with metal clips that lifts the sail up the mast.  This inland girl had never heard that term until a few days before, but I adored the sound of the word itself and the sound made by the thing, too.  To this day, that sound of wind flapping metal against hollow metal takes me back to Maine.

My puzzle was complete–minus the pieces lost years before–and there were several rainy hours to fill before dinner.  I opened the only book I could find in the guest room, a coffee table book about yachts.  Along with the dizzying pictures of boats slicing through the deep sea, my eyes so hungry for something to read found page after page of quotes about sailing and boats.

One stuck with me, that day as we floated in a fog dream, Richard already fighting an illness we couldn’t name and me anxiously pulling at my anchor.

A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928
 

We thought we were safe that day, but we weren’t.  I thought boredom was my greatest challenge that afternoon, but it wasn’t.  This quote came back to me a year later when I was a widow at 36.  Steering my own ship, venturing out from the harbor.  Finding out what I was built for.

Peace Be With You

5 Replies

After Fartbuster and I separated, I had trouble falling asleep most nights.  Too much going on in my head once life grew still around me.  On nights like that, I would close my eyes and imagine myself cradled in a large strong pair of hands, like one of the Anne Geddes baby portraits that were popular at the time.  Curled up safe, free to slip away into dreams.  Like this…

sleeping deer

What’s your favorite meditation when you want to find peace?  

Oh, For Flux Sake…

27 Replies
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Last week, I packed up my office for the first time in 5 years.  And honestly, some of that stuff had been with me for the 16 years that I’ve been in my previous job.  I started in the summer of 1996, when the torch was coming through Athens.

I moved the necessary stuff to my new office.  The furniture is awkard.  There are too many drawers.  The light is strange.  I’m going to park in a different lot.  The computer didn’t work.

Then I took a week off to spend time with my daughter as she turned six.  In a week, she grew up right in front of my eyes.  Now she can read on her own.  She can take better care of herself than I remember and it makes my heart tighten up.

My son looked at me last night with his dear baby face.  I asked, “Do you want to go swimming?” and out of the blue he replied, “Yes.”  It was our first give and take conversation. Now the week is drawing to a close and I’m feeling a huge wave of anxiety because everything is changing at once.  Job.  Kids.  Home.  It’s all gotten different and I’m feeling swimmy-headed.

Oh, for flux sake.  Flux is that state of flow, always moving, like a river. After Richard died and I faced that crushing grief, my therapist suggested that I view it as a river.  If you swim against a river, you tire quickly.  But if you bob and float, taking deep breaths, you conserve your energy.  The river is going to go where it goes.  You are along for the ride.

What the flux is up with you today?

Your Permission Slip

13 Replies

you are a runner

Back in 2008, I signed myself up for boot camp with a single goal:  I wanted to be able to do a military style REAL push-up by my 40th birthday.  Three weeks later, I did three!

Three months in, after running and working out three days a week in the company of my compatriots at WoW! Boot Camp, I felt better than I had ever felt about my body.  Not that it was getting thin–but I was getting STRONG.  I decided to jump on the bandwagon and sign myself up for a 5K.  

But to train for a 5K, I needed to increase my cardio training, which meant I would need to do some work on my own.  In the daylight.  Without my coach.  And someone who wasn’t also a member of the group might see me…exercising.  So my coach came up to me one morning (at 5:WTH30 in the morning) and asked if I had a training plan.  I stuttered, “Um, well, I thought I would start using the elliptical in my basement until I can do about 45 minutes worth because that will equate to about the same amount of effort…”  She looked at me sideways and said, “Nobody ever ran a 5K on an elliptical.  Why don’t you go outside and run?”  The immediate answer in my head was “Because someone might see me and laugh,” but I knew better than to say that to April.  I didn’t have an answer for her.  She suggested that I map out a 1.5 mile route from my house and go out and back, running as much as I could and walking the rest until I could work up to running the whole thing.  Easy Peasy.  

I was terrified to run in public because I felt like I needed a permission slip.  Wouldn’t “real” runners laugh at me if they saw in my $124 New Balance shoes and my double reinforced titanium running bra, size 40G (the G is for GOTDAMMM!)?  I took my dog with me so I could use him as an excuse to be out in public, taking up sidewalk, breathing the fresh air and pretending I was an athlete.  I started to run.  Just run.  I went at night so no one would see me, or on Sunday mornings when the mean people might be busy at church or still in jail.  

No test to pass.  No license to earn.  No membership card.  Just run.  

I finished my first 5K on a rainy Saturday morning.  I had to walk some.  Everyone there was nice to me.  I was scared to look over my shoulder during the race because I thought the only thing still behind me was the police car bringing up the rear.  But I did it and I was so proud of myself that I wore my number straight to a Weight Watchers meeting.  

So let this quote from John Bingham be your permission slip.  It doesn’t even have to be about running.  Replace the word “run” with sing, zip line, act, date, write, blog, swim, whatever you wish you had permission to do.  

Outrunning Crazy

13 Replies

This is an essay I wrote after running my first half marathon in November 2009.  I wrote it for the women in my boot camp group (WoW! Boot Camp) so some of the references are to our little group.  I sure do miss them.  The Atlanta Half is held on Thanksgiving morning and I highly recommend it if you’re thinking of trying a half…earn yer turkey!  

half finish.pngMy girlfriends at work asked for a picture from the Atlanta half marathon.  The only one I had with me was a screen grab from www.marathonfoto.com, so I attached it to an email and sent it out.  Jo replied, “We BELIEVE you ran it…you don’t have to stamp PROOF all over the picture!”  Duh.  We both got a good laugh out of that one.

But that kind of sums up the feelings I’ve had since crossing the finish line—I still need proof.  Marti asked if I had bought a 13.1 sticker for my car and I said, “No, I need to run a couple more before I advertise it on my car.”  I saw some cute shirts at the race expo (“I know I run like a girl—try to keep up.”) but I felt like a fraud about buying one.  I wore my medal to Thanksgiving dinner, but when my father complimented me on the achievement, I said, “Well, yeah, but I finished in a blistering 2:47.”  After my brother said, “I can’t believe you ran 13 miles this morning—that’s awesome!” I answered, “I didn’t run ALL of it; I had to walk up some of the bad hills.”  When the finish line picture arrived, my first thought wasn’t of the joy and pride I felt at that moment.  I didn’t see my smile.  It was more like, “OMG, my boobs look like they are trying to hide in my bellybutton!”

Yes, ladies, this is what a lifetime of Crazy sounds like.  Welcome to the inside of my head!  Anything sound familiar?

I spent $100 for an hour of therapy yesterday and our main topic was the Atlanta half marathon.  WHAT???  Have I honestly reached a point where I need a therapist to tell me that it’s OK to be proud of myself for doing something that was hard?  She reminded me that I have a teensy weensy old habit of thinking that nothing I ever do is good enough.  True.  That it only counts if it’s perfect.  Yeah.  That even if I run 13.1 miles, I didn’t run it quite fast enough, cute enough, smart enough….  OK, maybe she was on to something.  That did sound vaguely familiar, like she was channeling the voice of my first husband.  It’s a very old tape, maybe even an eight-track, that gets triggered in my head whenever I should be proud of myself—“Good job, Ashley, but it could have been better.”  The flip side of the tape plays when I even consider doing something that scares me—“Well, Ashley, don’t do it until you can do it perfectly.  People will know you for a fool.”  The greatest gift I’ve gotten from all those hours of therapy is the ability to hit the STOP button, skip tracks and play a new song.  Like Beyonce.  

So here’s what REALLY happened on race day.

  • I ran the first mile next to a squad of Marines.  Their cadence chant was about looking fine and feeling strong and I could have kissed every one of them on the mouth for getting those words into my head.
  • In the second mile, I talked to a woman who had only been running for two months.  It was her first race ever!  I encouraged her with all the things Michael harps on about running form—chin up, chest open, drive those elbows straight back, bend forward at your ankle, hold the baby bird eggs, in through the nose…
  • By mile three, so many people had passed me that I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was still back there.  I saw THOUSANDS of people and I giggled with glee.
  • Mile four and the towers of downtown Atlanta still looked as far away as the Emerald City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.  But I had a target.  Just keep running.
  • I reached our hotel at mile five and there were G and Vivi, waiting in the middle of Peachtree Street to give me a hug.  Vivi sang her little song, “Go, Mommy, Go, Mommy, GoGoGo!”  I thought my heart would burst with joy.
  • Mile six, I passed a woman who was running for Leukemia Society’s “Team In Training.”  I thanked her for raising money for LLS and told her that I had lost my husband, Richard, to leukemia four years earlier.
  • Finally, at mile seven, I was starting to get tired!  I ate some of those sport jelly beans (I think the flavor was “Gag”) as I walked up that bitch of a hill in front of Piedmont Hospital.  I thought about popping in to McDonald’s for a large Diet Coke but decided that would be poor form.
  • Downhill for mile eight…whee!
  • Mile nine I heard Tami saying, “Loosey Goosey! Loosey Goosey!” so I flapped my arms over my head like a card-toting lunatic.
  • I slapped the mile marker sign on mile 10.  I had never covered more than 10 miles on training runs, so this was new territory.
  • In mile 11, downtown Atlanta, three women were chugging along in front of me. One moaned, “I can’t do it” and slowed to a walk.  I came up beside her and said, “I think you can.”  Another stranger yelled, “I think you’re already doing it!”  It felt like the way we help each other believe in ourselves in boot camp.  She went back to running.
  • At the start of mile 12, I got really emotional.  The crowds got larger and people cheered, “You’re almost there!”  My quads were screaming and I had to walk up the hill by the capitol.  I followed the course around a sharp left corner then looked up to see a small, dark-haired man standing on the sidewalk by himself.  He was wearing a Leukemia Society Team In Training coach shirt.  He looked a lot like my late husband and I started to cry right there in the middle of the street.  All I could think was:  “I can run.  I am still here.  I am alive.  Running 13 miles is not the scariest thing I’ve done in this life.”  I was grateful for how far I had come and I was filled with hope that I really was going to be able to do this.
  • I could see the 13 mile marker and I dug deep, shuffling my way up that long uphill bridge to Turner Field.  I. Would. Not. Walk.  I crested the hill under the Olympic rings.  The finish line was a few hundred yards away!  For the first time, I saw the clock and it read 2:59:11.  If I busted it, I could finish under three hours!  I took off like I had been shot out of a cannon.  I was running like Tami being chased by April.  My arms were pumping and I may have shoved a couple of people.  I streaked across the finish line at 2:59:21.  I had outrun crazy! 

Jovita reminded me later in the recovery area that I had actually run faster than that.  I forgot about subtracting my start differential!  I finished in 2:46:37, 7697th overall, 3647th for the women’s division and 449th in my age group!!!!!

miracleNow I have satisfied my homework assignment from therapy—I wrote this story.  I hereby own my accomplishment and say I AM PROUD OF MYSELF.  The shirt I should have bought at the expo said, “The miracle is not that I finished, but that I had the courage to start.”  I’m going to go out and buy myself a 13.1 sticker and I WILL put it on my car!

May we all own our victories and talk about them as much as we talk about our mistakes. 

It’s OK to succeed, it’s OK to try and it’s OK to do it imperfectly.  It’s OK to come in 7697th.