As Mark Cavendish sprinted to the end of the race for first place two days in a row, so did I. Four and a half hours of sorting, tossing, and organizing.
Sorting and being expected to get rid of things is VERY difficult for hoarders. So many items have a story, a connection, a perceived value. Reducing the anxiety enough to let go of things takes time, patience, and determination. Can you imagine how many times I have heard "If you would just clean it up, and then keep it clean". To paraphrase my friend since 7th grade, Becky, If I could have organized it, and kept it straightened it up, I would have done it years ago and saved us all this trouble. Becky was dating two guys, David and Rock, which caused some drama from time to time. One night, David showed up at Becky's when Rock was there. In frustration and exasperation, he said, "Becky, can't you just make a decision and pick one of us?" She looked him straight in the eye, narrowed hers, and retorted, just as exasperated, "David, if I could have decided, I would have decided years ago and saved us all this trouble."
Drug of choice: Everyone I know has a drug of choice. Something to allow us to escape when we get stressed. Most of us do not opt for the illegal stuff, but we do "use" just as desperately as an addict. Our drugs of choice are "free" in terms of cash but can be costly in terms of time. I often use television as my drug of choice. And sleep. As soon as I start thinking about a difficult situation or decision to make, I immediately get sleepy. A two hour nap, and I have so forgotten whatever was causing me stress. However, just like the situation faced by the conventional addict, even after I've watched all the episodes of House or Judging Amy, or awakened from any number of naps, the problems are still there. It's much better to solve them now, rather than procrastinate, but then, "If I could have solved them, I would have solved them years ago and saved all this trouble."
P.S. Becky married Bob, not David or Rock.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Podium, Finally!
I finally made it to the podium. Stage Win for Day One. 2 hours in Nick's bedroom, 30 minutes of deskwork, 30 minutes working on the bedroom (clearing off my desk) , and 30 minutes in the living room (clearing off my desk and emptying 3 boxes. No jokes, no explanations, no story today. It's time to start Stage 2 which consists of 2.5 hours in Nick's room, and 40 minutes each for deskwork, bedroom, and living room.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Tour de Missouri: Day 1
Some of you who follow ALL the news may think, What is she talking about? The Tour of Missouri started last week. Well, as far as I'm concerned, until I watch what I taped from the television, it does not exist. I intend to watch stage 1 today. And how convenient, it also occurs at the same time as my metaphorical Tour of Missouri. One of my issues appears to be that I am a hoarder. This is a subset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and not just being a lazy slob. I have no doubt that I am also a lazy slob, but the hoarding apparently has a component that can be found in the DSM IV. The only difference in having OCD- Hoarding and being a lazy slob is that there are additional steps involved in de-cluttering if you have OCD. Medication is not prescribed and you still have to clean up. It's just 100 times harder for the hoarder than the non-hoarder and sometimes there are tears. Keep that in mind while reading the criteria for my metaphorical Tour. Two hours of de-cluttering in the back bedroom = finishing the stage. Thirty minutes of one, two, or three of the following rooms or project translates to a podium finish: Deskwork (i have years of unopened mail sitting around), the living room, the bedroom.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Out of sorts
Ok, today, I am out of sorts. Please, send sorts. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. I need to report on my metaphorical Tour of Ireland. I had assigned myself some tasks to do and if I finished them, that was going to count for metaphorically finishing the Tour. Well, I didn't do them, because of the previously mentioned distractions of This and That. I was mentally telling myself what a lazy idiot I was and guess what? Lance did not finish that last day of the Tour of Ireland.
I was talking to Johann. If you don't have the chance to routinely talk to Johann, you could read his book, We Might As Well Win. Johann Bruyneel is a very competitive person. He wins often, but even he cannot win all the time. He explained to me, "I had to not only accept the idea of losing, but find ways to appreciate it -- so I could learn from it as much as I had from my victories." Losing, or in my case, not accomplishing all the tasks I want to accomplish is part of life. Johann advises me to "Find a victory in every loss"
I tend to be very hard on myself. I expect a lot of myself and when I "fail" at something, I can easily go into an emotional tailspin. This is behavior that is quite worthless and even dangerous. I realize that, yet I still focus on the list of things yet to do, rather than the list of things completed. I'll never win the Tour de France this way. Therefore, I will change my thoughts. After decades of self-flagellation, how difficult could it be to change all that and welcome failures and mistakes as a chance to learn. Simple, huh?
I was talking to Johann. If you don't have the chance to routinely talk to Johann, you could read his book, We Might As Well Win. Johann Bruyneel is a very competitive person. He wins often, but even he cannot win all the time. He explained to me, "I had to not only accept the idea of losing, but find ways to appreciate it -- so I could learn from it as much as I had from my victories." Losing, or in my case, not accomplishing all the tasks I want to accomplish is part of life. Johann advises me to "Find a victory in every loss"
I tend to be very hard on myself. I expect a lot of myself and when I "fail" at something, I can easily go into an emotional tailspin. This is behavior that is quite worthless and even dangerous. I realize that, yet I still focus on the list of things yet to do, rather than the list of things completed. I'll never win the Tour de France this way. Therefore, I will change my thoughts. After decades of self-flagellation, how difficult could it be to change all that and welcome failures and mistakes as a chance to learn. Simple, huh?
Friday, September 11, 2009
A metaphorical yellow jersey
Now that I am back in training for Le Tour, the question does flit across my mind from time to time, What will determine the level of success I have in Le Tour, or even if I have trained enough to make the team. The point of the metaphorical tour was to work as hard on my "issues" as the cyclists do during Le Tour. So what are the benchmarks? In order to walk away with the yellow jersey, does my life have to be perfect? What is yellow jersey worthy? Losing 50 pounds? Getting the entire house organized? Getting half the house organized? Overcoming depression? Overcoming depression, getting the house organized, and losing 50 pounds? It gets a little complicated and I have not yet found the answer. If Lance wins the yellow, what do I have to do to win the green jersey? The trick about the Tour is that you wouldn't have to be very good, as long as no one else was very good. With all these options, I am announcing the criteria for making the metaphorical Team Radio Shack. When I bicycle, on a stationary bike, 1000 miles, I will qualify for the metaphorical team. 1000 miles for an overweight, middle aged, woman with high blood pressure? How hard could it be?
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Training Obstacles
The whole point to imagining a metaphorical Tour de France was to overcome some of the obstacles that had been holding me back from, as Oprah says, "living my best life". My list of obstacles is a long one. And they all have to do with me. Now there is also a list of things that are "THEIR" fault. If only they...... If only I had...... If only he would..... If only she wouldn't....... If only..... Well, readers, please don't tell THEM, but that list is completely irrelevant to my happiness, my contentment with my life, or the level of satisfaction I experience. Trust me, I've tried blaming everything on "them" at one time or another and even the times when "their" contribution to my situation was, by any reasonable standard, mean, hateful, and/or unfair, blaming "them" or the situations I find myself in, even if accurate, did not help me to feel better. Anything that changes has to be either me, my thoughts, and/or my actions. Believe me, I've tried changing the rest of the world. It has yet to happen. That leaves me to change. And change I will.
One of my most pressing (or de-pressing) problems is depression. I have had periods of depression probably all my life. I blamed those times on the situation. After a couple of decades of this, I was treated for depression and began medication. I still got depressed at times, but i came out of it. I had long periods of feeling good. I have always been able to find a bit of humor or irony even at the lowest of points, so I never considered myself a depressed person. I simply was taking medication to prevent a real depression. Sort of like, one expects recessions as part of the ups and downs of the economy, but a real depression needs to be fixed immediately, or else the depression gets worse and more people lose jobs and spend less, which causes more people to lose jobs and to spend less....and so on down that spiral.
One of the people on my sports psychologist team, the team that lives in the Super-Walmart size new wing of my house, the wing that is so much larger than the original house and the wings for the physical training staff, the nutritional staff, and the helicopter pad for Johann, is Randy J. Patterson. If you can't get him to move into a wing of your house, you could buy his book "Your Depression Map".
One of the things I learned from Randy J., as I call him, is that depression can be lifted. I always assumed that I was not a depressed person, I simply had a chemical imbalance which required medication to replace those chemicals so that I would not experience a 1930's style depression. He said that depression changes the chemicals in your brain, as well as chemicals, or lack of certain ones, cause depression. He explained it this way: When you have a cold, you have a runny nose as a symptom. However, the runny nose does not make the cold worse, even though it may feel that way. Pretty much the conventional wisdom is that a cold last 7 days if you treat it and a week if you don't. Depression is another animal. The symptoms of depression actually make the depression worse. You remember all the idiot things you have done and all the things you should have done but didn't and you feel bad. Feeling bad makes the depression worse. As the depression deepens more of those idiot things and unfinished things race through your mind, on a seemingly never ending loop. This makes the depression worse, and the spiral downward continues. You get the picture.
What R.J. (sometimes I call him R.J) told me I had to do was to reverse the spiral. As I sat wondering if we could hire Superman to reverse the downward spiral as he has reversed the rotation of the world so many times to help others, RJ-Man (sometimes I call him RJ-Man) explained. To reverse the spiral, you have to start in small steps. Since part of my depression was not getting done the things that needed to be done, I made a list of two simple things that I thought I could get done the next day. Since the things were simple and I am not always an idiot, I got them done, and what do you know, I felt a little better. When I say simple I mean simple. Simple as in 1.) find a stamp 2) mail the envelope. This only works if you KNOW where the envelope is. Finding both the stamp, and the item to mail would have been too much. Seriously.
This is where having your own race director is beneficial. Each night, Johann and I go over the list of what has to be done tomorrow. Prior to learning from the RJ-Meister (sometimesI call him RJ-Meister), I could have won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the world's longest to-do lists. Now I have a master list of things to do so I won't forget them, but my daily list is much smaller. Much smaller causes less stress and is more likely to get done. Getting things done makes me feel good. Feeling good, at least most of the time, is a way for me to live my best life and the point of training for my metaphysical Tour de France.
One of my most pressing (or de-pressing) problems is depression. I have had periods of depression probably all my life. I blamed those times on the situation. After a couple of decades of this, I was treated for depression and began medication. I still got depressed at times, but i came out of it. I had long periods of feeling good. I have always been able to find a bit of humor or irony even at the lowest of points, so I never considered myself a depressed person. I simply was taking medication to prevent a real depression. Sort of like, one expects recessions as part of the ups and downs of the economy, but a real depression needs to be fixed immediately, or else the depression gets worse and more people lose jobs and spend less, which causes more people to lose jobs and to spend less....and so on down that spiral.
One of the people on my sports psychologist team, the team that lives in the Super-Walmart size new wing of my house, the wing that is so much larger than the original house and the wings for the physical training staff, the nutritional staff, and the helicopter pad for Johann, is Randy J. Patterson. If you can't get him to move into a wing of your house, you could buy his book "Your Depression Map".
One of the things I learned from Randy J., as I call him, is that depression can be lifted. I always assumed that I was not a depressed person, I simply had a chemical imbalance which required medication to replace those chemicals so that I would not experience a 1930's style depression. He said that depression changes the chemicals in your brain, as well as chemicals, or lack of certain ones, cause depression. He explained it this way: When you have a cold, you have a runny nose as a symptom. However, the runny nose does not make the cold worse, even though it may feel that way. Pretty much the conventional wisdom is that a cold last 7 days if you treat it and a week if you don't. Depression is another animal. The symptoms of depression actually make the depression worse. You remember all the idiot things you have done and all the things you should have done but didn't and you feel bad. Feeling bad makes the depression worse. As the depression deepens more of those idiot things and unfinished things race through your mind, on a seemingly never ending loop. This makes the depression worse, and the spiral downward continues. You get the picture.
What R.J. (sometimes I call him R.J) told me I had to do was to reverse the spiral. As I sat wondering if we could hire Superman to reverse the downward spiral as he has reversed the rotation of the world so many times to help others, RJ-Man (sometimes I call him RJ-Man) explained. To reverse the spiral, you have to start in small steps. Since part of my depression was not getting done the things that needed to be done, I made a list of two simple things that I thought I could get done the next day. Since the things were simple and I am not always an idiot, I got them done, and what do you know, I felt a little better. When I say simple I mean simple. Simple as in 1.) find a stamp 2) mail the envelope. This only works if you KNOW where the envelope is. Finding both the stamp, and the item to mail would have been too much. Seriously.
This is where having your own race director is beneficial. Each night, Johann and I go over the list of what has to be done tomorrow. Prior to learning from the RJ-Meister (sometimesI call him RJ-Meister), I could have won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the world's longest to-do lists. Now I have a master list of things to do so I won't forget them, but my daily list is much smaller. Much smaller causes less stress and is more likely to get done. Getting things done makes me feel good. Feeling good, at least most of the time, is a way for me to live my best life and the point of training for my metaphysical Tour de France.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Training Resumed
My most sincere apologies for not being with you for such a long time. First THIS happened and then THAT happened and on top of everything else, I had no computer. Let me explain. Our household technically has three computers. One desktop and two laptops. The desktop totally fried and I was getting it repaired by my new computer guru who is also the younger brother of my friend Stephanie. Since two other laptops existed, there was no rush on the desktop computer. Alas, my favorite, (and only), daughter fell into her laptop in the dark. Don't ask, she is of that age without a fully developed prefrontal cortex. (Under 25). The arrangements for this rather expensive repair were that Dell would send a box and we would simply return the laptop in the box and hope that it was returned to our happy home before my favorite daughter went off to college. Wouldn't you know it, we didn't notice the box until a day or so after it arrived, which made it a little damp from the humidity caused by rain, even though it was under the roof of our front porch. As we were letting the box dry totally, one of our seven dogs ATE THE RETURN LABEL. Well YOU try to get a duplicate return label from a huge international corporation. Let me tell you, it ain't for the frail or feint of heart. I ought to know because I read my husband's newspaper column about how difficult it was. Since the drama of the I-will-eat-anything-I-can-find dog destroyed all hope of a speedy return of the college bound laptop, I offered my laptop as a temporary substitute. Therefore, this household had zero computers. I got the desktop back from the computer guru who looked at me and said, "all you have to do is load your programs from the original disks" I looked at him and replied, "you don't know me very well, do you?" So, he took the couputer back and loaded windows. Like I would have ANY idea where disks were that came with the computer in 2003. The computer stayed in my car for a week until I had the time and the inclination to clean and declutter the computer desk so that I could hook everything back up. Did that over the Labor Day weekend. Get it? LABOR day, I was working. This morning I managed to find the Office disks AND the 25-digit Product Key number and reconnect to the internet and Ta Da.......here we are.
You will be pleased to know that I was deterred from training from my metaphorical Tour de France only during the time that THIS and THAT occured and not the entire time I was computerless. Johann and I are working diligently, as are my staff of dozens. We have had to add on an entire addtion to the house the approximate size of a Walmart superstore to house the sports psychology team, but Johann and I are serious about Le Tour.
You will be pleased to know that I was deterred from training from my metaphorical Tour de France only during the time that THIS and THAT occured and not the entire time I was computerless. Johann and I are working diligently, as are my staff of dozens. We have had to add on an entire addtion to the house the approximate size of a Walmart superstore to house the sports psychology team, but Johann and I are serious about Le Tour.
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