when less is more: decision-making for the lazy

I had to go to Radio Shack over the weekend, to buy parts to hook up our TV in our recently renovated basement.  We had miles of speaker wire, but for some reason, no sound was coming out of the speakers (and the TV is so old that it has no internal speakers, so no speakers = no sound).  I brought our receiver and a small sample of our speaker wire to Radio Shack, and asked the clerk what I needed to connect the two properly.  Within a few minutes, she produced some red and black ends to attach to the end of the speaker wire so we could plug them in, rather than delicately winding the bare wires around some screws in the back of the receiver.  She then returned to the rack of parts, without saying anything.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Finding you another option."

"Won't those red and black end things work?"

"Yes.  But I wanted to find you another option."

This was totally confusing to me.  The red and black ends cost only a few dollars, and they would work.  Why would I want another option? 

And that is when I remembered, from my Happiness Project reading, that I was a satisficer. 

stripping down

I always thought that trees lost their leaves in the fall because they were unable to support green foliage during the cold, dry winter months.  This may be true.  However, when New York was hit with several inches of heavy, wet snow this weekend, before the trees were able to shed their leaves, I saw that this is not the only reason.  In my small town not far from New York City, we received only a few inches -- practically nothing compared to the several feet that upstate New York and New England received.  But still, even here, everything from small shrubs to large, decade- or century-old trees lost limbs.  Trunks were split down the middle, entire trees were lost, under the weight of the frozen water sitting on broad leaves.

I have heard that November is a month for goodbyes.  The leaves go, and the trees prepare for hard times ahead.  Last night, as I jogged through my town and surveyed the damage from the storm, still blocking off streets and lined up on curbs, I thought about stripping down in preparation for hard times. 

warm feelings

 I've always been an introspective person, but in the last year or so, I feel as if the question of what I want my life to be has been more all-consuming than is typical, even for me. The reason, I have come to understand, is sitting across the room from me now, frowning and scribbling something on her time diaries.

A few days ago (I'm a bit behind on my google reader), I read this post about getting married young. Toward the end, Robin, the author, says of being married young, "You hear people talk about 50% divorce rates and how those rates are even higher for people who get married young... [But] What about those people who focus on making themselves better as individuals because the biggest question mark in their life is already answered?"

Today, when I read a quote in which a woman said, "I remember the warm feeling of relief of knowing where my future was," I recalled what Robin said and it clicked into place.* 

a little break

Thursday night, the whole family was sitting on the couch watching an episode of the original Star Trek on the computer (what, we're nerds, okay?), when suddenly, Captain Kirk's smiling face was frozen on the screen.  We were simultaneously plunged into darkness and silence, other than the glow of the laptop.  Our power had gone out.

"Captain Kirk smiles weird.  Why does he always try to flirt with everyone like that?" B said. 

(Look at him.  He does kind of smile weird and try to flirt with everyone.)

Last week, a gasoline truck exploded in the middle of the night, burning down a gas station and causing the first power outage in several years for our house.  As a result, when the power went out this time, there were all kinds of hypotheses about what had happened, mostly involving explosions.  And, for some random reason, police men dying. (At least the police women were spared in all of the domesday scenarios, haha.  It's about time sexism worked in our favor.)

occupy wall street

(mounted police and barricades in front of the NYSE)

A few days ago, one of my west coast friends asked me if I had been down to the protests at Wall Street.  I had not.  To be honest, I live in a nice little bubble called Westchester, and was barely aware of what was going on -- other than the fact that it was costing in the neighborhood of $2 million a day in police overtime, which the local news looooooooved to point out at every opportunity.

So I decided to go check it out.  But first, I decided to do a bit of research as to what was actually being protested.  It was disconcerting to me that I could articulate the money spent on police overtime, but not the issues at hand. 

it's a jungle out there

Yesterday, we got back from Europe.  It was fun, but that is a topic for another post.  First, and non-chronologically, I am going to write about coming home.  I am sure that if you read this blog regularly, you'll note that the last time I posted was July 6, which is some time ago.  Before that, I had been struggling to write.  I kept feeling like I have nothing to say.  But sometimes, that's when you really SHOULD be writing.  At any rate, I'm first going to tell you about our pumpkin, and then we'll come back to this.

Anyway, before we left, we had this vine thing growing near our compost.  I know you're not supposed to grow "volunteer" plants out of your compost, because they are prone to disease, etc.  But I thought the vine was a pumpkin, and kind of couldn't resist the thought of growing our own Halloween pumpkin.  For free. The vine kept getting larger and larger.  I would occasionally run it over with the lawn mower to keep the pathway clear and de-tangle it from other plants it seemed to be trying to choke.  Then we went to Europe. I came home to this:

 

In case you're failing to appreciate what we have going on here, this is what our deck is starting to look like:

difficult times

"[T]imes are always difficult... for those living through them."

The quote above is from the book I'm reading right now, and has been echoing in my head for two days now.  I have been struggling for some time with writing a post that explains why.  Here is my dilemma:  For a blogger, I am oddly private.  Whenever I am going through something that is tough on me emotionally, my tendency is to withdraw.  Not just a little bit, but almost completely. 

For example, when I was going through my divorce -- actually, for about a year leading up to it and a year afterward -- I cut most contact with many of the people in my life who were important to me.  With a few very limited exceptions, people did not know what was going on.  People did not even know I was unhappy in my relationship/marriage.  As you can imagine, this pissed off a number of friends who I was supposedly really close to.  They felt left out, unimportant to me, etc. 

This was decidedly not true.  I just have trouble talking about things that are deeply personal, with anyone.  I prefer to ruminate, and let them sit, and work out for myself how I want to handle them.  I don't want advice, or input.  Often, I just plain don't want to talk about it -- I spend time with others in order to take a break from the issues that are weighing on my mind.  I would rather write about problems than share them with another person.  I certainly don't want to be asked about my problems -- if I want to talk about them, I will bring them up.  I feel burdened by keeping people up-to-date on all the latest developments.  When I'm going through something difficult, the last thing I want to deal with is that additional burden of making sure other people are kept apprised.  This is hard for people to accept; many people do not understand it, and my explanations just seem to make them more irritated.

And so, maybe you can see why I have been having a hard time writing something that is fit for public consumption lately.  Mostly, they end up like this post -- vague.

Because times are difficult.  I am going through things that are making me take a hard look at the person that I am, the person that I thought I was, and the person that I want to be.  But, times are always difficult for those living through them.  Whenever I got discouraged as a child, my mom always said to me "This, too, shall pass."   Both of my yoga teachers also reminded me of this, using difficult poses as an analogy -- the discomfort is thirty seconds, and then it is over, as are the trials and difficulties of our life.  Perhaps that is true, but I don't happen to find it very comforting.

And so, I find myself wondering lately, when is it time to stop thinking of the "difficult time" as a temporary setback in the rest of life, which shall pass, and start to realize that the difficult time is not temporary at all: it actually is life?

dead things, mikey, dead things

Not the kind of dead things that these guys found:

(The Goonies)

But instead, the kind that are all around my yard.  While I have been enjoying myself on the beach on Fire Island, or at least sitting in the office studying for the GRE, summer has arrived.  With summer, comes heat, and with heat, comes dead flowers.  All those pretty spring blooms on my flowering shrubs have been replaced by this stuff:

As a result, just as it heats up into the eighties, I have to dead head and make a date with the hedge trimmers.  I tried to ignore this chore, until I was reminded by A Way to Garden that if you wait too long to prune, you risk ruining next years blooms, as the buds will already have formed.

lion taming

In the battle of man vs. nature, it's commonly understood that nature is going to win.  It's like this in every book where man (and I do mean MAN, usually) goes up against nature and tries to survive/tame/whatever - nature always comes out on top. 

For this reason, I don't know why I bother with things like dandelions.  They seem to crop up everywhere, and the latest place is each and every crack of our back patio.  They're heaving the paver bricks up and out, and trying to pull the beasts merely results in a handful of leaves, with the stubborn taproot still firmly in place, under the patio.

Since today seems like it will be the last of our unseasonably warm days, I've relocated myself out onto the patio, which is what makes me think of it.  Posting a picture feels like one of those ads for Fosters beer.

(Australian for Home Office)

on solitude

It turns out, I suppose, that I have been worried about the wrong things.  Before I quit my job, I spent long hours talking to Kathy, to my therapist, to anyone who would listen, about how, even when I quit, I would still have a schedule, I would still have things to do, don't worry, I won't come unmoored.

(Photo Credit)

As it turns out, having this schedule, all these things to do, was the problem all along.  I've cleaned my closet, I've cleared out and bleached the fridge.  I've spread mulch and watched tulips push their way out of the soil in the garden.  I've kept my appointments and made lunch plans.  I've stepped up when the nanny was ill and attended school events (including one for a neighbor kid when both his parents were working).  I've called my parents, I've spent the day in Brooklyn with long-neglected friends.  I've kept busy.

And I feel a panic similar to the panic I felt while working, that there aren't enough hours in the day for all of these obligations.  That if I don't get up now, I will waste the best part of the day, where there is a moment of silence, and the obligations will come crashing in.  In my obsession with keeping myself busy to fend off the depression everyone promised (myself included!) would follow quitting a job which consumed the vast majority of my life energy for the three years I worked at it -- as well as the three years I trained for it -- I neglected what my soul was telling me as it ached to just quit in the first place. 

square

(istockphoto)

I love living in our small town.  I think it's apparent to anyone who reads this blog that I do.  I also love having kids in my life (especially A, B, and C, Kathy's kids).  I love living with Kathy.  I love doing things around the house, I love cooking, I love books.  I do not love crowded bars, nightclubs, or general admission concerts.  I don't like the city, and I don't like hipsters (sorry, but I don't, being around them makes me all nervous and self-conscious.  It's why I won't go to Williamsburg).  I like turtlenecks.  I don't like loud music, other than in the car.  I know myself pretty well.  Why, then, do I have a hard time surrendering to who I really am? 

When I was younger, I used to chirp to my parents all the time about how I wanted to live in a city.  I said it so much that I started to believe it.  Specifically, I wanted to live in San Francisco.  My sister said the same thing (only failed to name her city.  Sister, you lose points for specificity).  I talked about how wasteful it was to commute by car, when mass transit would be available if only you lived in the city.  I talked about how selfish it was for people to want their own little plot of land (to do what in, I asked my parents).  I mean really, you can walk one block and throw the ball in the park, right?  And community gardens, people! 

I also used to say that it's really important to be single, so you can find yourself and really know yourself before committing to a long-term relationship.  I glorified the idea of single-dom.  All those friends I would have, all the late nights at bars talking about interesting things (and, no doubt, complaining about the losers in the dating world).  All the lovers, with no strings attached.  The freedom of it all.