Psyching yourself out

Breathe in, breathe out. I went thru a spell a while back where it felt like I couldn't get my breath. I told a stomach doctor that after I eat sometimes I feel like can't breathe very well. He said don't eat so much. Thanks, I couldn't have figured that out by myself. But in reality it didn't seem to be related to the food. I also noticed the sensation of being short of air when I lay down at night.

I recognized lying in the darkness that I could escalate the situation or calm it simply by how I thought about it. I could concentrate on the tightness in my abs or I could concentrate on air flowing in and out of my chest as I breathed slowly and steadily.

I started thinking about the power of the mind. As a writer, I do often try to get inside people's heads. The thing is I'm not a super psychology student and it's not my first instinct to look into the thoughts or motivations of someone else. I like plot so I easily get swept away in the activities. Next they did this, and then they did that.

But seeing in myself my own "opportunity" to talk myself into near panic over catching my breath or calming myself down if I talked differently made me think about the psychology of characters and strangers more.

A friend of mine described how she took the anger level of driving way down by imagining that the person that cut her off had to pee or was on their way to an emergency. Or even she could imagine that they were having a really bad day and if cutting her off could make them feel more in control of their lives maybe they just needed that at the moment and she would "give" them that.

The power of our thoughts on our perspective is amazing really.  You hear stories of the bitter victims of disease faring worse than those who make peace with it and fight on. In both cases they are fighting but one seems to do so with more grace and sometimes more success.

Whatever was causing my own breathing issues went away on it's own with no medical intervention. I could have spent a lot of time in emergency rooms at bedtime had I listened to the panic voice in my head. Instead, I concentrated on the air I did have. I wonder what other situations in life I could adjust the way I see? Opportunity or problem? I think in psychology they would call it "reframing" how I look at the situation.

So as I'm beginning to think of my next book I'm going to write I'm trying to imagine what kind of psychological journey I can take my characters on this time. From panic to serene? Maybe that's a bit too much, but it makes me want to look at how people cope and their motivations more.

Carry On Tips for Travel

Many of the airlines are getting to be sticklers and charging for luggage or even weighing the carry ons -- especially the low cost ones. It pays to pack strategically. I'm getting ready for a couple of those kind of trips. Here's some of my ideas.

Color coordinate. I can get a lot more distance from my clothes and fit better in a carry on size if I choose a color scheme. If all my clothes are interchangeable, then that spaghetti accident on day one doesn't mean I have to wear it the rest of the trip. I know none of you have this problem, it's just me.

I have a personal rule of always taking two pair of jeans or trousers or skirt or whatever due to the same risk of accident. I also take two pair of shoes. This is a personal preference because my feet will go a long way, but generally the next day they need a different pair of shoes in order to do it again. Wear one, take one in the carry on -- stick to the color scheme. As much as I want to be cool and fashionable, it may be necessary to fit it all in the bag to leave the boots or chunky shoes at home or plan to wear those each way on the plane. Only the walking worthy shoes make the cut.

I can make my clothes last and even rinse them out but toiletries for this girl are a little more tricky. That one liter bag seems to shrink as I put my essentials in it. I understand boys don't have this problem.

One tip is if you buy name brand make up and they have free giveaways (usually smaller sizes) save those for trips. Also if you go to a shop that gives you a sample of a lotion or something, keep that tiny sample dish if it has a screw on lid. That single ounce size may make all the difference from having some sunblock along on the trip or not.

I keep those little containers and clean them filling them only according to the trip's needs. The bottles and containers you buy for this purpose are often a little larger which limits how many different types of products you can take. I recently bought some shampoo type bottles. I'd be lucky to get three of them and a toothpaste travel size in my bag. I need more than three products. Look for containers that have large openings for easy refilling. The little capsule that the disposable gloves come in with hair dye is great for hair gel or creme that isn't real liquid-y.

It may sound a little rustic but those tiny bars of soap that you get at hotels can double in a pinch as shampoo as well as shower gel. If you have one of those little bars, it doesn't have to go in your precious one liter liquid bag. Leave the shower gel and shampoo at home and throw an emergency bar in the bottom of the bag in case the hotel or hostel does not provide those.

Or alternately shop on location. This is often an option but those cheap flights may be really late arrivals, or if it's an event or conference you may not be in control or in a location where you have the option to get to a shop easily.

Try to use one product for two. My face sunblock can double for the body sunblock if it's a trip that doesn't need a lot. Plus I can downsize it to one of my little containers. Conditioner will work not only to help you comb your long hair but also you can shave with it. Try to give it up a product just for the trip or plan a different hair style that leaves some product behind.

Don't forget that in addition to your travel toiletries they want you to put anything else you normally carry in your purse in the one liter bag. Lip gloss, lotion, or hand sanitizer.  I use a lotion that is a hand sanitizer to combine those.

Extra tip: even when I'm checking a bag and I can put my full size bottles in. I will pack and emergency supplies type one liter, so that should the big bag not arrive, I can survive a day or two. This is usually toothpaste, toothbrush (outside the bag), make up, an eyeliner or mascara, deodorant, and conditioner.

A handy travel product if you have room is Downy Wrinkle Releaser. I just keep the bottle and mix up my own made out of 1/3 fabric softener and water, but the bottle size generally is 1/4 of your one liter bag. If you arrive, hang up your clothes and spray them usually they'll be wearable the next day without looking like they were in the suitcase.

Pros and Cons of Cruising from an indie traveler perspective

I just got back from a Baltic cruise. I don't have much experience with cruising. We are not the people that go a couple times a year. In fact, it's been twice in 25 years. The first time was a family outing and I did not make any decisions about it. I showed up when I was told to and it was Caribbean so quite different than this Baltic one. My impressions from that long ago cruise were few: everyone was seasick as we had bad seas, lots of different food I hadn't had before,  brief visits that were far too short to see an actual location, and expensive.

Normally we do independent travel. Plan our own tickets and hotels and go on our own, sometimes in the car and other times flying and pubic transport. Five years ago for example we the Amalfi coast of Italy. We stayed in four cities and used public transport to change cities every couple days.

This year was a special anniversary, so we wanted to do something out of the norm. We also had an exceedingly hectic six months prior to this opportunity to vacation, and really no time or maybe no energy to plan something. We found a last minute deal on the cruise, had a good tax return this year,  and decided to go for it. We needed to relax.

Pros:
We had free room service available and took advantage of it by having breakfast in our room nearly every morning. It was relaxing and easy. Two mornings we had to be up and moving early we didn't do it and I found the group dining room to be crowded, hard to find a table, and hassle ridden. God bless the wait staff hustling but it was crazy. A much greater selection of food was available in the dining room however, than what was on the menu for room service though.

I also took advantage of room service when we were deciding to eat later by ordering cheese and crackers, or cookies. It was wonderful to eat a light snack and watch the sea go by while sipping a hot tea. It was chilly up there so I enjoyed the tea service a lot. This was one of the more relaxing aspects.

No thinking needed. The agenda is laid out for you on the cruise. What things there are to do at what times and what time you can get off the boat to see the city. This is a season of my life I needed to not have to figure out what was next and this made it more relaxing. Granted I didn't take very much advantage of their offerings and mostly relaxed with my book.

Unpacking once and sleeping the same place. I think that made the trip much more relaxing. I think if you are trying to see a wide scope of places in a short trip cruising is probably much less harried than say a bus trip where you change hotels each night.

We were advised by several experienced cruisers to get a balcony and this turned out to be very good advice. It was really nice to watch the ports come and go or to step out and watch the sun or check the weather. It made our room much more appealing, a good refuge.

If you are a nervous traveler, cruising is a good option. The food is there and you don't have to second guess much of anything. You can even sign up for shore excursions  and be hand carried to see the important sites. It can be a no brainer.

Variety and Service. Our boat seemed full of people from all over the world and in the evenings we chose to randomly eat with different people which was very interesting. We ate with people from Denmark, South Africa, Ireland, England, and even a couple from the USA. A lot of the boat was people from the U.S. actually and because of that or the cruise company policy customer service was more like I am accustomed to in the U.S. and that was pleasant.

Cons:

Feeling herded like cattle. At the first embarkation I noticed it, we were in rows and rows of wrap around lines and lots of people were complaining. I mean we're essentially going to grown up Disneyland, so we should expect lines, right? Getting off the boat for the ports of call was definitely a herd feeling too. If you had an organized tour, you generally had a tight schedule to keep and for some that means fighting the other cattle to get ahead. The cruise people did a good job of efficiently unloading the boat but it was still 2,000 people to move.

We chose open seating for dinner and generally eat later so we never had to wait, but I noticed others waiting on occasion and wondered if you could run into the same crowded sensation with the food too if you weren't careful.

Expensive. All this hand carrying is not cheap. You get good value for your Euro or your Dollar but this was not our best value trip. Other than the buffet style restaurant and one other restaurant on board, the other eating places required a supplement between $10 per person all the way up to $89. We did not eat at the supplement locations and had good food throughout minus some soggy shrimp, but not as exotic as the first cruise I took. Perhaps though I am just a more seasoned traveler now. The food seemed heavy toward the American side but was generally good quality. The only beverages included were coffee, tea, and water. Soda, gourmet coffee, and cocktail drinkers beware. They would offer drinks at times that were like part of the show and after people took them the servers would come around and ask for your room card to charge you.

The excursions were, for me, shockingly expensive. I saw after the fact that you are paying quite a few people to help you handlers and tour guides, not to mention pre-planned private transport to very specific sites and entry tickets. So it has all been done for you - and that doesn't come cheap. We did two excursions and I will blog about those later.

Still under expensive: tips are not included and there are a ton of people waiting on you. They are doing a very good job and deserve to get paid properly and that involves tipping. The cruise company we went with charges you $130 per person for all the tips for everyone. This is after you get on and in addition to your cruise price. So it's all taken care of, but if you've never been before it might hit your budget if you didn't know.

Sales gimmicks. Everywhere you turned on the boat something was being sold or pushed. Paintings. Jewelery, Faberge Eggs, Russian nesting dolls, t-shirts from past and present cruises, photographs, photograph sittings, spa visits, drinks etc. I guess they must make some good money on all the extras or they wouldn't do it, but it felt a little shopping channel to me. Of course, you don't have to participate but it's always there.

We had a good time and for certain kinds of trips I would do a cruise again. The Norwegian fjords for example I think would be good to see from the water or anytime you are trying to get a lot of countries or a big country like China into a 10 day trip, a cruise would be an easier way to do that. You only dip your toe into the culture with say an 8 hour day trip to one city, but it's a nice taste and let's face it not all travelers are cut out for the deep immersion travel so this is a good way to visit on the lighter side with some hand carrying.

Viva la difference!
 

Honesty in writing

In writing circles you hear a lot about honesty in your writing. It's something that perplexes me and yet in another way I understand it. I'm not sure I've acheived it in all I write yet.

I know they mean sincerity and not forcing things into the story that don't belong just because you want to talk about them subtly. The story needs to be real and hang together in its own storyline skin. I know what they mean and I know when I read something that doesn't follow this rule.

In fiction, however, you're always making it up. I haven't killed anyone (yet) but I make up stories where people get killed. In fact, the tradition I was raised in makes it hard for me -- being true to my own self -- to even put a swear word in a bad guy's mouth. But the bad guy would say the word. It's just that I wouldn't.

I also cry out to God at the slightest hint of challenge or distress. If I was "honest" literally all my characters would do this too. Instead, I must listen to the character and the story and be true to that story as it germinates in my brain. It's hard not to redirect based on something I can hear my mom saying, or my friends saying.

I'm reading a rather fresh tongue in cheek travelogue. I know at times the author has added to the story and yet it is truly in his own voice. I can feel that. It inspires me to try my hand at some bits of honest nonfiction. Okay, if I'm really honest, it would be sarcastic nonfiction.

Perceptions of time part 1

I have recognized that I and many of my fellow Norte Americanos are obsessed with the idea of wasting time. Particularly in the US, I think we think about this. Me personally, I have started noticing how many things I view as potentially wasting my time. One that feels huge to me is when you have to load software or some random extra computer things. This feels like a huge interruption to what I'm trying to get done. Sometimes what I'm trying to "get done" isn't particularly important, but ask me to upload something on the way to viewing your kid's funny video and you've lost me.

Other things I put aside and don't do instantly because it will "take too long." Now I don't have a magic number for what too long is and I'm often surprised those things can be done more quickly than I realize. A good example of this is when I set the microwave to warm something for 2 minutes. Often  I stand and stare absently out the window for this 2 minutes. While there is nothing wrong with a quiet moment or two of speculation or meditation, occasionally when I'm there with the two minutes ticking on the micro - I'll do a few things around the kitchen. Recently, I washed my two travel mugs by hand and put them away. They lived on the counter for days because I "didn't have time" to clean them. Or maybe I just didn't feel like it, but that's a different blog.

My own perfectionist nature and my own sense of time and it being "wasted" or "stolen" is a challenge I've only recently recognized in my life. I've toyed iwth the idea of timing things. I'm not sure whether to take one day and time every single thing I do (which seems like it would be a pain and waste a lot of time in that one day) or do I take a few weeks and time every kind of event that occurs in a day. This may be something I revisit on and off this year. I feel like if I did this I could prove to myself that a lot of things don't take that long and some of the procrastination isn't really helping.

I read a business organizational book a couple years ago and it recommended when trying to get a desk or email under control, do everything that will only take 2 minutes or less on the spot, right then. Other things that need more attention need to go on an action, call, or project list for an appropriate time. I've tried to do this, but I often start say, responding to an email, and then discover I need to dig into some old emails or find a contact list from a conference, and the envisioned 2 minutes turns into 10 or 15. Or at least that's how it feels. If I timed it, I wonder, would that be true? Or possible is it worse than I imagine? Did it take 30 minutes? So was I wasting my time? Was it important enough to get that much time? (That's probably another blog and another self help book.)

If you were going to time events in your life, which ones would you be most interested to know how much time they took? I think my ipod has a timer, so I thought about using this and documenting a day or  a series of days. Though I sort of imagine "wasting" a lot of time that day putzing around trying to get the timer thing to work. huh.

Lessons not learned

I guess there are things that are going to be a challenge all my days. I look back at things I blogged about last year that still haunt me. Or something I'll read in a book or the Bible one day that seems so apropos and so applicable and then I can't seem to make it work in my soul the very next day. Apparently "getting it right" (is that a perfectionist voice sticking out?) isn't goine to be a one time project but an ongoing life long process. I remember as a teenager recognizing that I am overly self-sufficient (self dependent?) and have struggled to put things in God's hands. So what do I struggle with when I'm ahem, 40-something? I'm self-sufficient and don't trust.

Last year I blogged in "I'm damaging my calm" about knowing God's love is unconditional and yet finding myself straining and thinking well, if I tried harder at this or that....maybe I'd get better results. I blame myself for the results rather than trusting in a loving God who cares about me and living whole in that, end of sentence, nothing to do with what I DO.

One thing that I know that is a constant challenge for me is not knowing when enough is enough. In the fund raising process, as I've complained a few times in the last year, it is slow and there is very little feedback on whether things are working or not. So that "getting it right" voice, says, "well, maybe if you....fill in the blank." I have over the last year or maybe always not known when I've done my best and when I've crossed the line into striving. This has come at the price of a deep exhaustion this year. Do you have any tricks for knowing when enough is enough?

The odd thing is I still know and believe but somehow don't know how to function in the fact that I am God's precious child. I do not need to earn his acceptance or approval but simply accept that love. But I am the child on the swings, sure of the Father's love, yet calling out to him, "Do you see me? See how high I swing? Is it good?" And I think all the time, He may be trying to get me to go inside and have a nap.

Review: 3 Self Help Type Books

I was reading a writing ezine recently and they put out the challenge to review all the books you read. I have thought of this but have never set out to do it. I don't know that my "readership" is really that interested in my book choices but I figured why not? In order to sort of facilitate this and catch up to 2011, I am combining several books here.

January for some reason was a month of mostly nonfiction, personal improvement, self help books. Any of you who've been reading know I prefer fiction and slow down immensely when I read nonfiction. Two of these books were started last year and finished in January. These books had been recommended by various sources so I wanted see what I could glean from them.

Telling Yourself the Truth by Backus and Champion
This was recommending to me by a professional in the self help industry as well as a friend who had read it. This is my second reading and I started it in 2010 and finished it in January. It is written from a completely Christian view, yet it does not give in to trite answer to serious challenges. It does use scripture to augment what is essentially cognitive therapy boiled down (from a nonprofessional perspective). I can recommend this book and will probably revisit it from time to time during hard phases of life.


Expectations and Burnout, Women Surviving the Great Commission, by Eenigenburg & Bliss
Obviously this book has a more narrow audience in mind. It was expensive to buy as it is more of an academic book. I think it was based partly on someone's thesis where research questionnaires were filled out and collated into statistics. However if you are a missionary I could recommend it because between the sometimes surprising responses to the study questionnaire is enough personal experience of burnout and missions agency challenges to be very worthwhile. It has really challenged me to try to get away and spend some time in deep reflection and evaluation. I hope to schedule that sometime soon.


Thrilled to Death, How the Endless Pursuit of Pleasure is Leaving us Numb, by Hart
I set out to find another book by this author that someone recommended but this was the one the library had and it sounded interesting. It was. It is both a psychological explanation of studies of something called anhedonia. This is when things that once brought pleasure do not or it takes more and more extreme things to enjoy ourselves. This is a symptom seen in many mental illnesses today and can also not accompany any illness other than not really enjoying oneself anymore. I skimmed several chapters that did not apply to me (kids and anhedonia etc) but found the second half of the book very interesting as a 7 step process to overcome this and learn to enjoy life and small things as well as big ones again. The writer is a Christian but unlike the first book I described he isn't speaking to Christians except in a couple places in the book where he specifically says so. There's a great description on meditative prayer as well as simple sound advice that pulls you back from the brink of overstimulation.

That's 3 out of 5 books for January. I'll do the fiction books I've read separately and then try to keep up more as the year progresses.

Notes to my older self

I've been thinking for the last couple years that there are so many things I can learn from my grandparents and the older people in my life. Some of the things I've learned from direct statements by them but some are by observing their lives.

I wonder though if the younger me, now, maybe is unrealistic for what I will be capable of say in my 70s or 80s, if I make it that far. Or maybe what I think I will want will be dramatically different than I think it is right now.

So here goes. Notes to my older self in no particular order:

• Don't complain. Or at least get it out of my system and move on.
• Try to see something good in each day.
• Shower regularly. 
• Get dressed everyday.
• Keep socializing, even if I don't feel like it.
• Don't get too picky about food or you'll be a prisoner to your own tastes.
• Don't get too picky that no one's help is good enough.
• Stop and smell the flowers.
• If I end up somewhere new, make new friends.
• Tell people you appreciate them while they are here, rather than saying it to others when they're gone.
• If no one invites me, I will invite them. (Christmas, birthdays, etc)
• Try to make it easier for whoever has to take care of things when I'm gone. (downsize and clean out).
• Enjoy what I have even if it means using it up.
• Life is what you make it.
• Use the good dishes.
• Young people help you feel young.
• Cliques exist even in retirement homes. That is never ending.
• Go to the doctor even if I don't want to go. Take the medicine they prescribe according to directions.
• Walk.
• Get time outdoors.
• If you get out of the habit of something, it's over. (cooking, driving, shopping) Keep doing things as long as possible.
• Try to leave space for other music styles, clothes styles, etc. to not all be horrible because they aren't what I liked.

I'm sure there's more. What would you add? Any objections?

I also hope when I'm older I'll be able to afford a cleaning helper and regular pedicures, but I suppose that's pure indulgence.

Of course, I really need to start practicing this stuff now, why not? Right?