adventure · fulfillment · fun

Who’s Next?

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4.3.18.jpg

The woman who attracted my last several partners was a procrastinator.  A couch-sitting dreamer.  The woman who attracted my last boyfriends is one who has desires galore for a larger, more engaged life, but puts off actions toward those goals.

Now before you all jump on me and say, “Hey, you’ve done a ton of stuff, lady!” (for which I’m grateful to have you in my corner), I will tell you that, Yes, I have.

And it’s not a fraction of what it could be.

One analogy that has been sticking with me lately is the idea of driving with the emergency brake on: in order to go farther or faster, you don’t have to push the pedal down further, you don’t need to work “harder” — you simply have to take the brake off, and you find yourself careening along the roadway.

What does it mean, then, to take the e-brake off my internal car?

Well, I’m struck this morning by my Time Plan.  A time plan is a tool I use when I have loose unstructured time, such as this Spring Break.  A person like me is liable to lay on the couch with Netflix, peanut-butter stuffed pretzels, and gorge away the week.  I know this about myself (though it doesn’t mean I’ve not stacked time for such indulgences into my plan!) so I have gained a tool over the years to help combat this lethargy.

But, in writing my time plan for this morning, I realize that it looks nearly identical to the one I wrote for Sunday and for Monday this week:  Wake up, do morning practice stuff, do some school worky-work, rest, clean, run, eat dinner, read Game of Thrones.

There’s not one thing “wrong” with this plan… except that it’s BORRRRING!!!!!

WHERE IS THE FUN???  Here I am, a lively woman in my mid-30s in one of the most dynamic urban areas of the world, and even the trail I run is the SAME??

I am a woman who can ride on the fumes of fulfillment and fun.  Would it surprise you to imagine that running on fumes creates a feedback loop that desires sitting on the couch with pretzel crumbs in your bra?

This is not the woman I want to be.  I already know I don’t want to be bra-crumb lady, but nor do I want to be Queen of the Lord’s most boring Spring Break.

So this morning, where I’d already written 2 hours of worky-work, I stole one of those back for the honor of Fun:  Piano.

I’ll haul my keyboard down from the long-neglected art studio upstairs, set it up where J’s desk will be vacating, and start practicing the Christmas carol it’s my goal to learn by Christmas.

It’s not “skydive” or “gallery walk,” but it’s a start (and I’ve already planned gallery walk for tomorrow).

The person I need to be next cannot be boring—and she cannot put off her desires, life, or loves.  I deserve more, and better, and so do the people I’m on the road to meet.

 

breakups · growth · relationships

Grief isn’t Linear.

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4.2.18.jpg

Such is what a mentor relayed to me many years ago.

As I begin to envision what life “post-J” will look like, the crying bouts are frequent—short but frequent.  A sudden welling up, perhaps a few shoulder-rattling sobs, and then a deep breath and a moving on into the next moment.

It’s Spring Break from school right now, and J is on his annual ski-backpacking trip with some friends.  He’ll be back Wednesday night, so I’ve been experiencing a few days of “what it’ll be like when he’s not here.”  He’s signed a lease and will begin moving his stuff out when he returns.

He’d taken the end of the week off in anticipation of our mini-vacation to Los Angeles, as we’d planned to take when we were still… making plans.

It’s hard, this breaking up thing.  It’s hard as the breaker, because it feels like I have the power to take it back, to make it go away, to “make it right”… but there is no making it right here.  And I have to continuously, repeatedly, and painfully remind myself of all the reasons “why not.”

We got into it on Saturday before he left for his trip.  He was facing the possibility of having to cancel his trip because of drama at work.  A trip that he plans his whole year around, that he cherishes and anticipates, with people he laughs with only this once a year.  And they were going to take it from him (or so he lamented).

And I got so mad.  I got so angry that he wasn’t more angry.  That he wasn’t as fed up and over it as I was — or at least not so much that he’s willing to make a change around his work situation.  He is trying, but he’s …

It’s not my business.  That’s what I had to keep coming to on Saturday.  I have TRIED this.  I have tried the convincing, the cheerleading, the obviously-not-so-helpful helping.  And it has always led me to leave.  To despair, to hurt, to hopelessness, and to leave.

Breaking up has so much balancing and weighing, so many reminiscences of the good, like the pencil from the hotel where we stayed in New York that I fished out of a bag this morning.  There is so much good, and there is so much not.

Remembering either is excruciating.

But of anything that I “know for sure” (to quote Oprah), I know this pain is temporary.  And I know the woman I must become—to be ready for who I will be, and who I will attract, next.

 

 

healing · relationships · self-support

Stacking the Bench

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.29.18

Yesterday, I asked my 6th graders to complete this journal prompt:  Write a list of members of Team ____ (your name).

“Team Molly” is a concept I’ve held for a few years, as people rotate in and out of my life and, as I told my students, it’s particularly helpful to write (or think) this list during times of hardship or stress, change or loneliness.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of transition happening for me with the dissolution of my long-term relationship as I look toward what’s next, but also take stock of what came before.

To crib a Passover question: How is this relationship different from all other relationships?  And perhaps more importantly, how is it the same?

In a time like this, I need Team Molly.  I need to remember it, call upon it, and utilize its members.  Or, you know, I could just bump around the world doing the same things I’ve always done and getting the same results.  That’s an option, too.

Who’s on your bench?

 

action · inspiration · self-care

That’s Better!

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3.28.18

Not usually one for a “day in the life” blog, but it seems essential following yesterday’s declaration of time limiting my literary indulgences.  So what did I do yesterday with all my “new-found” time?!

Firstly, on the drive to work, I did listen to The Success Principles… but only after I tried to listen to NPR, to music, (dontwanna dontwanna… oh wow, this is really inspiring).  And so it was.  The author, Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, was describing the “principle” of delegating anything that is not in our “core genius” or core competencies.  (I immediately texted my girl friend to ask for the number of her house cleaner!)

At work, during my break, I went outside where it was sunny and hot and I could watch my soon-to-be-graduated 8th graders play basketball while making gangly attempts at flirting with one another;)

On the drive home, my copy of The Year of Yes had expired, so I went into podcasts to see what Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations had for me — and they had Lin-Manuel Miranda.  *swoon!!*  I think his interview has been the most authentic of those I’ve heard, and I was thrilled to listen as I slogged through the traffic home, where we were all set upon by an awful accident that increased my 45-minute commute to 1.5 hours… BUT!  After Lin-Manuel, I began the Stephen Colbert interview and by the time I parked out front of my house, it was still sunny, warm, and light out.

Drop off my bags, change into stretchy pants and sneakers, douse on some sunscreen — and text a girl friend.  I arrived home to the pair of tickets I’d ordered to SF Symphony’s pipe organ recital — THE THING HAS OVER 8,000 PIPES!!!  I’m enamored of pipe organs and would go and diddle around on the one at Mills College when I was studying there.  The one in SF is grand, gorgeous, and I had a gift certificate, so I bought two hopeful tickets without an idea of who might accompany me.

Yesterday, I finally had a brainwave (with all my extra, non-dragon-eaten braincells) to connect with a girlfriend from Mills whose been active in a group of medieval songsters.  Yeah, that sounds like the right person.

So off into the sunshine I went, for an hour and a half!  I walked the cemetery/park I used to run, and talked with a heron and an oak tree and some sparrows.  I jogged the downhill and leapt into the running/flying part I love so much.  It was light out, warm, and easy.  I remembered how much I love to run/fly.

On the walk back, I texted with another girl friend and on arriving home went straight to the couch to read.  Physics.

I’d ordered a college text in January when I thought I’d be able to attend College of Marin’s physics class, but it turns out I need the prerequisite that’s only offered in the fall.  (The math-based prerequisite.)  But!  One step at a time.  So I lay on the couch, reading the dry humor of a physics professor for an hour, watching the time tick towards 8pm when I could finally open the 5th book of the Game of Thrones.

But there was still time to spare… I couldn’t open it til 8:00… what to do??

Well, I could floss?  Okay.  I could do those dishes in the sink?  Okay.  Ah, and here’s my Mills singing girlfriend agreeing to accompany me in May.  And now it’s 8:01!

Perfect.  Truly, perfect.

 

addiction · avoidance · health

Bridge and Tunnel

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.27.18

Game of Thrones has eaten my imagination.  You’re probably as tired of hearing about it as I am of reading it.  It’s 5,000 pages of binge.  Even a weekend spent devouring Stranger Things is a shorter time suck!

I bring it up because I notice that my blog post from yesterday was half-assed and scant, but it was also all I had.  I didn’t have much to reflect, relate, or realize because all of my brain cells have been consumed by dragons.

I listen to the audio-book on the way to work; I listen to it on the way home; I listen while I’m organizing my classroom and read the book between classes.  I read it at the breakfast table on weekends.  I read it for 3 hours on the couch every afternoon.

This means that there’s no room or time or breadth for any other thoughts.  Nothing of my own imagination or realization, no time to reflect on anything, no room to plan or make progress on anything… The series has eaten my life.

Before I began these obliviating books, I had a structure for my commute:  Listen to The Success Principles on Hoopla on my drive in and Anna Karenina on my way home.  (I’d tired of NPR, even delightful Kai Ryssdal, and music can be too noisy after a day of children.)

But Karenina grew burdensome and I was enjoying GoT, so I paid for the audiobook and began listening on the way home… then on the way in.  Then during my breaks, moments of pause, moments of zen… now unzenlike.

I reflect on this today because the new meditation challenge from Oprah and Deepak is about “Shedding the Weight,” about using food to drown our feelings or thoughts.  While I don’t generally suffer from overeating, I can assure you that having spent the previous month on the couch after work for 3 hours every day has done nothing for my level of physical energy or esteem around my body.  I am drowning in words.

Sometimes, it’s important for me to “dig to the bottom” of my self-harming behaviors, to really get to the root and suss out what’s going on.  I don’t think this is one of them.  Whether I’m using words to drown out feelings from my self-inquiry work, shame around delayed work-work (e.g. grading papers), mourning my relationship, discomfort from my living situation as my ex- still lives here, or simple avoidance of any number of projects I have in the pipeline…

It does not matter!  It is likely all of those, and a host of other sh*t.  But the point for me, the action, the antidote remains the same: Get back to my positive habits!  GET SOME NEW INPUT.

Listen to The Success Principles.  Use my commute home to start recording songs, as I’d promised my Goals Group.  Use my gym membership.  WALK in the afternoons now that it’s light out.  Listen to The Year of Yes.

Find more nourishing input.

GoT is fine; it is.  (It’s pretty brilliant world-building…and clearly engaging!)  But it’s also junk food for me.  I’ve been binging and drowning and crowding out all other awareness.  And it’s time to chain it up between the hours of 8pm and 830pm as I tuck into bed, like a normal, literate person.  (Please dear god amen.)

(Yes, I go to bed at 830; I wake up at 445 to do all this!);)

 

commitment · community · growth

Bird by Bird

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I’ve registered for a homeownership course given by the city, the one required for anyone applying to “below market rate” housing.  I also went to the open house for that 1-bedroom condo on Lake Street yesterday … and it needs a lot of work.  But!  Just one foot before the other.  “This or something better,” is how I’ve heard it put.

As my now-partner becomes my then-partner, my rent bill will increase to previously-held levels come April 1, but luckily I haven’t changed much in my expenses.  It was certainly nice to put more into retirement, savings, and self-care categories, but as I plot April’s budget, it’s only made me realize that said previously-held levels don’t have a lot of breathing room.  It continues to highlight that an increase in income will be necessary at some point soon.

Last Sunday, I finished the 6-month “Goals Group” I was participating in weekly with 2 ladies, and we’ll be restarting another round of it in a few weeks with slightly different faces (or voices, since it’s a phone call!).  One of the ladies in the last group began working on a book at the start of the call, and by April 1 will have her book completed, ready for Amazon!

As I begin to prep for the next Goals Group, what goal am I looking to accomplish?  Where do I need structure and support and accountability?  What does my life want of me next?  And how much more breathing room can I attract into it?

 

deprivation · fulfillment · truth

What are you hungry for?

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.23.18.jpg

This month marks 5 years from my final chemo treatment for Leukemia, meaning this month also marks the 1st month when I can stop counting months!  To explain, the general thinking around cancer survivorship is that if you last for 5 years after treatment without a recurrence, then you become as healthy as the next person (assuming that person is healthy).  The Sword of Damacles that hangs above the survivor’s head begins to fade and vanish (assuming you let it).

But what strikes me today is the following question: What am I doing with the life that I fought so incredibly hard to keep living?

A brush with death (or a defensive line-backer’s full-frontal gory smash-up with death) will bring anyone to question what it is they want out of life.  And so, when I am now listening to Oprah and Deepak’s new 21-day meditation challenge about “Hunger,” and they ask me what am I truly hungering for … well, I better have a good answer!

While I am extremely lucky enough to not have a (permanently) unbalanced relationship with overeating (or undereating), I do have an unhealthy relationship with my couch.  It’s the lover I can’t leave, the fuzziest, comfiest and thread-bariest socks I still wear, it’s the oblivion I crave.  I love my couch.  I love the sunshine streaming over it in the afternoons after work, I love the smooshy feeling of cuddling beneath the blankets, and especially the rich middle of a book I like.  (I like the middle best.)

But.  I’ve fought the demons of Hell and my own blood cells to earn the right to lay on that couch — is this truly what I fought for?  Well, no.  Somewhat, but not entirely.

Oprah asks, What am I really hungry for?  What is it that I’m trying to attain by saturating myself with words?  What comfort or distraction?

Several years ago, near about the time I moved to San Francisco from New Jersey, I was laboring on some inner work that was raising extreme discomfort within me.  I was renting a room in a house owned by a lady who worked for a hotel chain, and she would bring home any leftovers from the “continental breakfast” they served there.  This included fruit, yogurt… and muffins.  Hordes of muffins.

I would huddle in my room, writing for 20 minutes, then step out into the hallway, pad down to the fridge, and grab a muffin.  Just one.  I’d pad back to my room and keep writing.  20 minutes later, I’d open my bedroom door again.  The fridge door again.  And on, until all the muffins were gone.  Just one more.

I was so uncomfortable.  When I recounted this discomfiting activity to my therapist at the time, she wisely asked, “If you weren’t eating, what would you be doing?”  I immediately replied, “Crying,” and thusly broke down into wracking sobs.

The writing piece ended soon enough, and so did the compulsive muffin-eating, but the question remains here:  If I weren’t reading, what would I be doing? 

Adventuring.

 

abundance · action · possibility

A bigger database.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.21.18

I’ve heard it said while languishing in scarcity-mind: G-d has a bigger database than you.

And this is good, because frequently it’s hard to imagine a life bigger, more full, more “optioned” than the one I invent from my brain.  In particular at present, I’ve been having a brain-expanding (exploding?) moment around property, homeownership.

Perhaps if you’re like me, you’ve considered that owning a home is something for people who have saved a ton of money, who have worked in high-earning fields, or who have family to help them out.  I’ve certainly thought this way.  I’ve made homeownership to mean “something for other people.”  People who are lucky (and in my darker moments, ungrateful) enough to have family to support them (ingrates).  People who earn copious amounts of money that I never imagine I’ll attain.  People who’ve scrimped and saved, while I’ve rubbed two pennies together, hoping for a nickel to pop out.

But.  G-d’s database is bigger than mine.  I don’t know everything.  (Luckily, cuz then I’d die!)  For example, I didn’t know that my paltry-for-the-Bay-Area salary means I qualify for affordable housing opportunities.

Like this one-bedroom condo on Lake Street in San Francisco.

This all came to pass because of an email describing a program I don’t even qualify for.  At work, my boss forwarded an email from the County Education Office heralding a program for teachers to get assistance in the downpayment on a house.  Galvanized by this idea, I emailed the company and they replied that it’s a program only for public school educators, not for a private school teacher like me.

But between the moments of excitement and deflation, I went to their website and used their calculator to discover that with my (paltry) salary and their loan terms, I could afford a house costing $350,000.  So I went onto Redfin, typed that number into the search features in San Francisco, … and found the most wonderful home.

Wait a second, even teeny tiny condos on Lake Street go for $600,000 — what is this?  Well, it’s an Affordable Housing unit where the prices are held artificially low for people, like me, to have a chance.

This led to a flurry of activity.  I discovered yesterday that to qualify to be considered for this property, I have to complete a housing education class, I have to apply to the program, I have to talk to one of their loan officers, and then I have to wait in the lottery to win the place or any place in their program.

Huh.  Okay.  …  Well, I can sign up for an education class.  I can apply to a program, talk to a loan officer, and carry on with my life while my number may or may not come up.  In other words — I can do this.  I can do this.

Absolutely zilch may come of it—it is a lottery after all—but you can’t win a lottery unless you buy a ticket.

And furthermore, the remarkable idea that a person “like me” could own a home in this crazy messed up market makes my little heart flutter with possibility.

 

growth · nature · patience

Sometimes Asparagus.

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3.20.18

A few years ago, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about her year-long “experiment” to eat locally for one year.  In it, I learned about braiding garlic and how clumsy turkeys mate.  I also learned that asparagus have quite a unique manner of growing: they display no sign of change, growth, renewal whatsoever for weeks and then you walk outside one morning, and the whole field has sprouted with bright green spires.

The metaphor of the asparagus is pretty strong: while the field may look fallow, you can bet that there is a host of action happening beyond your vision, and one day, all that change will pop forth fully grown as Athena.

Sometimes, I feel like a “typical” plant, growing slowly but visibly with every passing day.  I can notice the changes in my wardrobe, that I’ve begun doing my dishes more regularly(!), or that the books I’m reading have a particular theme to them.

But, sometimes, I pray to be asparagus.

Because then, at least, an absence of obvious growth doesn’t feel disheartening or soddening.  Sometimes the work I put in has no clear result, whether on finance or romance, the line of a song or the filming of a vlog.  Sometimes, it’s just plain work… and sometimes I don’t wanna.

So I have to remember that I, or my projects, may simply be asparagus, working miracles I cannot yet glimpse.  I need to have faith that Nature works its own time-frame, its own intelligence, and that one day, the field will blossom gloriously.  As will the next, and the next.

Happy Spring, Everyone!

 

indecision · letting go · relationships

Silly Putty.

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

3.19.18

At the beginning of this month, I let my therapist know that I would be canceling for March while J and I attended couples’ therapy, since I couldn’t afford both.  When, after the 1st session with our couples’ lady, I told J as much, he looked agog — horrified, morelike.  Uh, so maybe it would be good for me to see her while we go through this?  Perhaps he was right, so I scheduled back on with my own lady.

Then, after our 2nd session with the couples’ person, we broke up and I had a little more funds to throw at my own personal therapy… but really, I didn’t want to.  I was sick with the flu last week, so we had a phone session instead, yet as we hung up, it was me who asked, “Same time next week?”

But the truth is I’d meant to use that session to end things with her!  I didn’t want to continue going.  Part of the reason we began together was so that I could parse out what was going on with me and J.  Now that that’s (relatively) settled, I truly don’t feel the need to keep going.

After that call, I wrote in my journal, “So, let’s get this straight: You’re continuing to see a therapist because you think that’s what she needs?”  And so it came that I emailed her yesterday to officially and for all (foreseeable) time cancel our upcoming appointments.

She wrote back to say okay, but also that this on-again-off-again with her was redolent of how it’s been with J, and that if I wanted to schedule a last session to process this idea, and how our therapy has gone, she’s open to it.

NO!  I don’t.  And YES, she’s right about the parallels.

When I was in the final phases of processing and deciding whether to leave this relationship, a friend said that we’re having a silly-putty breakup.  Huh?  You know when you break apart silly putty in a slow way, she said, it dangles on, a thin strand getting weaker forever?  Well, when you break it apart quickly, the whole thing breaks off in two pieces at once, with a clean edge to both sides.

Hmmm….

My breakups over the last dozen years have allll been the llllong silly-putty break-ups.  Months of questioning.  Months of negotiating out of it, into it, back out of it.  Months of tearful phone calls to friends about “what to do.”  And months of continuing to sleep with the person I’ve told I don’t want to be in a relationship with anymore.

Silly putty.

And painful.  So, when my therapist lady asks if I want to process any more?  For the love — No!!  I am so done with processing.  Can I change this habit of stretching my decisions on into infinity?  Yes, I believe I can.  Do I have to give this relationship any more than I already have?  No.

So, I believe I’ll just email her a simple thank you, put my two halves of putty away, and go for a goddamn walk.