4 Days: Asking for help…

I put together two of these this week...

I’ve now heard variations of it three times in the last day.  Moving house is potentially the greatest source of stress and anxiety, second only to death in the family.  I’m doing OK, but with my possessions littered all over Tel Aviv and a party in three days, I’m trying my damndest to stay calm.

But I’m not doing too much.  All I’ve done today is put this together:

The smallest computer desk in creation...only 60 cm wide!

Seems simple, right?  Wrong.  Took two hours.  Oh well.  It’s done.  I’m not entirely inept.  Not entirely.

I had planned to go back to my old place today and pack up all what’s left and clean a bit in preparation for tomorrow night when I’m again borrowing a car and perhaps some friends to help me lift things.  But I cannot be bothered. Do you know just how hot it is in Tel Aviv?

And speaking of asking for help… Gretchen Rubin again has a great article on HuffPo on the topic.  I’ve not been closely following her happiness project, but every time I’ve visited the “living” section, her insights are always wonderful and often helpful.  This article raises a really interesting point: if you want to become closer with someone, give them the opportunity to help you.  And I’m really not good at that.  Asking for help.  Accepting a lot of it.  I feel beholden.  I feel bad.  Then again, I love helping others.  If I help and help and help, without allowing others to return the favor, perhaps it’s been a major flaw in my character these past 12 years of my adulthood, or so.

Asking for help is a sign of trust.  In helping others, I prove to be trustworthy.  But in not asking for help, I only prove to myself that I am wary of trusting others.

That said, if you know me, if you’re coming to my party, I will try to delegate the tasks necessary to prepare.  I seriously want an easy birthday, so it should be easy to ask for help, right?  Let’s hope.

Now… to prove I’ve not entirely wasted my day, I’m going to finish unpacking the last suitcase I have here (more to come tomorrow, might as well make the house as unpacked and clean as possible beforehand), go back to the hardware store (the desk lamp I purchased does not work), and maybe even go to the grocery store to buy food and supplies for the party…so I don’t have to have a heart attack about it on Wednesday and Thursday.  Right?  Right.  Onward and upward!  Yeah!

29 Days: Do one thing every day. Period.

Discipline.  Rather, self-discipline.  AND consistency.  Two very big issues of mine.  When I work for other people, or when I’m in a structured situation like in a university, I meet my deadlines.  I don’t let other people or myself down.  It’s hard.  I wait until the last minute a lot.  But I do it.  And I succeed.  Perhaps it’s why I have thrived in very deadline driven places and occupations.  I’m an excellent student and an excellent publicist.

On my own, however, I’m so crappy at self-discipline, I feel like I regularly fail myself.  Is it because I have nobody to “please,” nobody looking over my shoulder and judging me?  Am I incapable of function without external criticism and expectation?

What am I getting to here?  I don’t know the answers to why I am this way.  It relates to a lot of what I talk about with my therapist, of course.  What I do know is that this pattern of scary inactivity and shame has to stop.  Must.  I’m an adult.  I have so much going for me.  If I don’t want to tread water, I don’t have to.  I just have to make a decision, create a plan, and stick to it.  Even if nobody is watching.

So, what to do?  Where to start?  I think a good thing to begin with is to establish a routine.  Make sure there are things that I do every day.  Not once or twice per week.  Every day.  Why? Because you’re more likely to be successful if there’s no way to get out of it (i.e. oh, it’s my weekly task, but I’m so busy, I’ll do it tomorrow).  Sure, I’ve got some weekly things (primarily my therapist and some other semi-regular doctors’ appointments).  They help to keep me “human” and get me out of the house.  It’s a good start.  But it’s nowhere near enough.  Nowhere near enough.  This is an article from HuffPo on the topic.  It got me thinking, and I even bookmarked this specific page on my toolbar.  I look at it daily.

And now, I’ve got to implement some of this.  Now.  I want to be able to look back at this month and know that I work hard and achieved some results.  I want to be proud of myself on this big birthday.

To Do Every Day for 29 Days (and maybe much more…)

1. Write/edit my book for at least one hour, and preferable two or three.
2. Apply to three jobs/send three resumes to employment agencies.
3. Call at least two friends.
4. Get at least six hours of sleep every night and attempt to go to sleep before midnight.
5. Begin the above “work” in the morning hours (i.e. before 10 am).

I think these things are do-able.  It’s a short list.  Which is good.  Because it still looks daunting to me.  Imagine – the fact that going to bed at midnight and forcing myself to sleep six straight hours being “scary” to me.  However, everything on this list is easy as apple pie.  I am very capable.  I finished writing this book.  I did.  Yes, editing is hard.  Harder.  But I think I’ve reached a mountain peak in this process.  It’s hard to go down, sometimes harder than going up, sure.  But this time, I can clearly see where I’m going, right?  And the resume thing?  It has to be done.  I should perhaps add door-knocking or follow-up calling, etc, to the list, but I don’t think it’s realistic to do daily.  If I do three a day, that’s 15 per week.  And truth be told, once you apply to one or two jobs online, it’s just as easy to apply to five or ten.  It’s just time consuming.  Not “difficult.”  So if I can stick to my guns here, I’ll inevitably be applying to more than three per day.

Good plan.  Yes, good plan.  At the end of the month, I should have a far more solid draft of my book, ready to go out to agents and publishers.  And I may have a part time, full time, or contract kind of job.  And these are things I need.  I need them.  I want to be able to hold my head high come July 31.  I want to round off this decade in style.  With some dignity.

83 Days: news, news, news…

So, when you’re on vacation, as I was for about three weeks, you lose touch. I barely kept up with any news. And so, here are some of today’s links. Stuff I found interesting. Stuff I can’t believe I missed. Etc.

Oprah to visit Susan Boyle at home in Scotland. Something not to miss…

The Star Trek movie opened! And I was somewhere in Italy drinking Limoncino and Sciacchetra in Cinque Terre and completely forgot about it!  And it got great reviews, and it looks like it will be this summer’s blockbuster, and this means millions of new Trek fans, I hope, and I couldn’t be happier…and now I need to go see this movie!!! AND I discovered it opened here in Israel at the same time, so no worries for me!!!

A song called “I kissed a girl and I liked it” is now playing on the army radio station, and I’ve never heard of it before, but I like it…let’s google, shall we?

Ah, here ’tis:

And so much more exciting, devastating, embarrassing schtuff…involving beauty queens, politicians, Afghanistan, comedians, wild fires, and much, much more…check out the Huffington Post for the most entertaining way to become informed.

121 Days: Think you can make a fool out of me?

Didn’t think so.

That’s not exactly true.  I tend to be so gullible, Webster’s did start printing my picture about fifteen years ago next to the word.  Right.

But I am so so so ridiculously thrilled at all the April Fools pranks going around the mass media circuit.  I’m going to post some funny videos and links.  Just because.  It’s so nice to laugh, don’t you think?  We don’t do it often enough, at least I don’t.  And having taken a “Laughing Yoga” class in recent memory, I’m told it’s supposed to be really healthy.  Even if you don’t mean it.  Laughter, even the fake kind, is truly the best medicine.

Enjoy!

BBC‘s the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest 1957:

Microsoft unveiled a new yodeling game, Alpine Legend, that lets you “jam with alpine legends like Franz “The Manz” Lang and Johann Hornbostel.” Add-ons include a tri-horne and a goat:

Qualcomm, oh my, just watch:

Stay tuned to Huffington Post’s best pranks of 2009, being continually updated all day!