Day 275: Eavesdrop

Posted on October 2, 2014 by joshdaddy

OK, that word doesn’t sound so good, so let me explain.

Tonight, my eight-year-old found an old picture book that my wife had bought for her a couple of years ago. She sat at the kitchen table, reading out loud, while I did the dishes. I am not sure if she was reading to me or just near me, but I wasn’t really paying too much attention either way. But as she continued to read, I started to listen in more closely:

Then, spreading his arms as wide as he could, Grandpa said, “This is the Now….Wherever you are…that’s the Now. You just have to pay attention.”

The book she was reading was Milton’s Secret, by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman. I can’t say I’ve ever given Tolle’s writings much thought, and I don’t think I will run out to buy one of his best selling books of insight, but it was a pleasant moment to hear my eight year old reading something that asked her to reflect on what it means to be in the moment.

And of course, being in that moment with her, listening to her read, was the true gift of this evening.

I’m glad I started to pay attention!

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Day 274: Reply

Posted on October 1, 2014 by joshdaddy

I’ve tried to keep up with comments on this blog on a daily basis, but for the past couple of days, I have not taken the time to reply. So tonight, I caught up on those comments–and it got me to thinking.

There are all sorts of reasons for responding to blog posts. It’s just plain polite for one thing. And I’m sure there are all sorts of blog-savvy reasons for responding to comments as well.

But for me today, focusing on this simple act was a way of acknowledging the contributions you have made in helping me sustain this experiment, day after day.

I’ve made similar acknowledgements before, but it bears repeating: thank you for the part you have played, and the part you continue to play, in supporting me on this yearlong endeavor. Regardless of the format–a comment on this site, a share on another social media site, an email, or a face-to-face conversation–and regardless of how frequently you have done so, I have appreciated your feedback and support.

And I look forward to hearing from you again soon.

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Day 273: Monotask

Posted on September 30, 2014 by joshdaddy

Why is it so freaking hard to do just one thing at a time?

When I first started off this blog, I was certain that I would be paying a lot of attention to monotasking–doing one thing at a time, and doing it as mindfully and deliberately as possible. What I have found over the past 273 days is that monotasking is the one thing that I probably forget to do most. In fact, I’ve only used the “monotasking” tag 11 times in nine months.

So today, once again, I was catching myself reading email on my phone while I was walking from one building to the next. And at lunch, while I ate my sandwich. And at a stoplight on the drive home. And so on.

Each time, it took a conscious effort on my part to break from the habit of doing two things at once. The phone is just a handy example. The truth is–I’m doing it all the time, and each time I do it, I am distracting myself from one task to attend to another.

Even now. I have another pot of soup on the stove, and while that is cooking, here I am doing something else.

Now, maybe standing over a pot of chicken soup seems like a dumb way to spend my time–but I think that’s the point. I keep thinking about time as something I am spending or wasting. Instead, I’d rather focus on time as something I am in the process of experiencing. Insert Bergson reading here, if you want more philosophy….

So I’m going back downstairs now, and I’m going to hang out in the kitchen. Maybe I will start some biscuits. Maybe I will set the table. But whatever I do, I want to be present for the task of preparing a meal, not distracted by the 108 other claims to my attention that will pull me out of the moment.

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Day 272: Pile

Posted on September 29, 2014 by joshdaddy

I started to call today’s entry “stack,” but I already used that one. So pile it is.

We had a cord of wood delivered today. The truck dumped it at the end of my driveway, and I hired out my oldest to stack the wood under the porch, where some older paper birch has been piled since last year.

When I came home, I discovered my son had subcontracted with his sister, and the two of them were busy at work. He gave me a big wave and a smile. He was obviously quite pleased with his progress.

The wood, however, lay in a low-slung chaotic heap. Yes, it was under the porch, but in nothing resembling a wood pile.

He was obviously disappointed with my redirection, though he understood the reasoning once I explained to him why, come winter with its snow and its ice, we will want neatly stacked wood, not a tangle of logs.

He got to work re-stacking. I volunteered to help, reassuring him that he would still get paid for his work.

About twenty or thirty minutes in, I sent him and his sister inside to eat dinner (I had already eaten at a reception at work and decided to keep working through the family meal.) As it started to get dark, I started to reconsider my decision. No, not because I was missing a family meal, but because I realized that I had managed to take away from my son a chore he had taken pride in doing–even when he realized he would have to redo it.

So I went in and told him to finish the job tomorrow. More importantly, I think, I told him to finish the job based on his own judgement on how to finish out the wood pile.

And regardless of how he chooses to finish out those stacks, I am sure it will be a job well done–for both of us.

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Day 271: Housekeep

Posted on September 28, 2014 by joshdaddy

Sundays have become our adventure days–as long as the weather holds out, it’s our time to hit one of the many day hikes within easy reach of our home.

But not today.

Left to my own devices, I would probably spend every chance I get heading out somewhere. But things at home need tending to as well. So today, it was all about sorting out fall and winter clothes from spring and summer clothes. And sweeping. And scrubbing toilets.

Hooray.

Oh, I know that there are opportunities for contemplative practice embedded in all sorts of mundane activities. But for most of the day, I felt more like a petulant teenager suffering through chores than anything else.

Around 5pm we called it quits, and I put a pot of kale and potato soup on the stove to cook–which bought me a good 90 minutes to head up the road for a short session in the woods. I really felt I needed that time, no matter how brief. The chores took priority today, for certain, but it really felt like good medicine for me to be in the woods on a Sunday.

Perhaps it’s another one of those “so what did I really do today to simplify my life” days-but I think the answer is this: sure, I need to strike a balance between household practice (doesn’t that sound better than housekeeping?) and being outdoors, but I also need to find a way to give myself what I need to keep on an even keel…even if it means just an hour and a half in the woods while dinner cooks.

 

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Day 270: Suffer

Posted on September 27, 2014 by joshdaddy

Suffer little children…even your own.

I have to admit that I have been pretty impatient today with my kids. I don’t know why–being overtired is a good guess, but I think it can also be a handy excuse. Regardless of the cause, though, today it was a bit of a struggle to be patient with all three of my kids.

Really, all anybody did today was–be kids. There was a lot of noise today, a lot of loud play and a lot of loud bickering. I’m usually pretty good about letting kids be kids, but today I felt myself getting annoyed a little too easily.

I’d love to say that I discovered an easy remedy some time around noon or 1pm, and the day transformed itself from a series of irritations to a procession of joys. But no such luck. Instead, here I am, at 11:30pm, wondering how I might have diffused my irritation earlier in the day.

Nope, still no answer….

I do know this, though–regardless of how frustrated or exasperated I may feel now, it really won’t be too long from now when all three of my children will be grown and out on their own. My oldest is less than four years away from college–and the “baby” is nearly halfway there.

So suffer away, I say–in every sense of the word. If I can’t melt away the irritation, at least I can claim it as my own for this one day and still capturethis day with my children as it unfolded, even in my flawed and less than gracious acceptance of what it had to offer.

 

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Day 269: Feed

Posted on September 26, 2014 by joshdaddy

I like to cook, and I love to have my family gathered together around the table for dinner. We eat family meals more nights that not, but schedules being what they are, there is always at least one night a week where we end up eating out.

And then there are weeks like this one, where we spend more nights eating out than in.

The last meal I cooked was Monday night. And tonight, it was looking like it would be the fourth day in a row that we would eat out. I left the office late–it was nearly six o’clock. My oldest boy was going to the gym, and I was contemplating meeting him there. But if I chose to go to the gym instead of going home to cook dinner, that would force us into another night of eating out. I weighed my options.

And then I decided to head home and cook dinner.

And I’m glad I did. It was yummy, and even if we didn’t manage to sit down together at the same time, at least we were all eating under the same roof.

So tonight was about making choices. At first, I thought I was deciding between being selfish and being more family-oriented. But the more I think about it, the more I see how both choices were self-ish.

The choice was really: which aspect of my self was I willing to feed?

 

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Day 268: Perpetuate

Posted on September 25, 2014 by joshdaddy

We drove out to the Altapasss Orchard tonight to hear a woman tell stories about the ghosts of Mitchell County. Counting the five of us, we were an audience of about two dozen–and all five of us were the youngest people in the room.

The woman telling stories has just completed a book, in which she had compiled a number of first- and second-hand stories of “supernatural encounters.” I’ll leave the scare quotes (pun intended, I suppose) there for you to do with as you wish. I suggested that we all go for two reasons. First: I know my wife likes a good ghost story. And second: it was my kids’ first exposure to mountain culture storytelling.

The storyteller could spin a fairly good yarn, but the highlight of the night, really, was when she turned the telling over to the audience. One by one, these older residents of the mountains told their own ghost stories–some dating back a long time, and some from recent memory. We also got our first taste of Brown Mountain Lights stories.

We don’t actively restrict screens in our house. My kids watch as much television as the next kid (with some variation from child to child), and my two oldest pretty much go nowhere without their phones. But all three of them appreciated this very different kind of evening’s entertainment. And I think all three of them understood that what they were experiencing was a very old form of entertainment, well-practiced in this region.

No, I don’t have any fantasies about any one of my children keeping Jack Tales alive for the next generation. But it feels good to know that they got to experience first hand, and in a very low key, non-touristy way, our local storytelling culture.

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Day 267: Rise

Posted on September 24, 2014 by joshdaddy

I’ve changed the wake-up song on my phone again. Now it’s “Rise,” by Eddie Vedder. On the ride into work this morning, the song was still stuck in my head, so I put it on in the car. The cattle were out in the pasture grazing as I came up onto the top of the ridge. The sun was shining in a blue sky, with just a few soft clouds dabbed here and there for contrast. Eddie Vedder was singing:

Such is the passage of time, too fast to fold
Suddenly swallowed by signs, lo and behold
Gonna rise up, find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up, throw down my ace in the hole

It was just a moment. Nothing profound, nothing life changing, but a moment. And I was there for it. And it was beautiful.

I’m sure there’s no shortage of moments–they keep coming, don’t they–but it seems all too rare that I am actually aware of the moment as I am experiencing it. It’s so much easier to be oblivious to the world beyond my own thoughts, but of course more often than not “the good stuff” is not what’s going on between my ears, but what’s happening right in front of my eyes.

Sure, I’d like to string more moments of mindfulness together, but just for today: I was grateful to be present, if only for that one moment, to the flow of my life as I was living it.

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Day 266: Ration

Posted on September 23, 2014 by joshdaddy

There’s no denying it: we waste food.

I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy family meals. But I am guilty of cooking more than my family will eat in one sitting. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of not having enough at the table. Or maybe I’m motivated by some fantasy involving midnight snacks. Whatever the impetus, I’m always left with too many leftovers, which eventually end up in the trash (or at best, in the dog dish).

Today, I stared down those piles of parcels and storage tubs that we have stuffed in every corner of the fridge, and I cleaned house. But unlike other de-cluttering activities, this one brings me no joy, because everything I end up throwing away is something that could have been a meal.

I’ve done this before, of course, and I’m sure I will have to do it again. But today, the cycle really started to get to me. It’s time to stop–or at least, do what I can to cut down on the rate at which I accumulate excess.

So the fridge is cleared out. Now let’s see what I can do to ration out meals in keeping with my family’s appetite. And let’s see how long we can go waste-free in the kitchen.

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