Musings from a Whirling Dervish

Whistle While You Work

Years ago -- at least five, probably seven or eight -- I remember a conversation I had with my best friends in California. Actually it was more of a debate: Was it better to do freelance work that you didn't really like for great pay so you could work less and have more time to do the things you really loved? Or was it better to create a life around work you really loved even if it meant working crazy hours and possibly lowering your standard of living?

I was living the first option and voted for the second, believing work should be play. I envisioned a life where each day I would wake up excited to go achieve whatever was on my to-do list for the day. My friends were more pragmatic: Bang out the boring work, and then go play. None of us even considered the third option of working lots of hours for little pay doing something you didn't like. No thank you, period.

I headed back up to Montana, where I'd moved to be closer to nature. I didn't have a clear vision of passionate work that would light me on fire, and it was pretty nice to just work 25 to 30 hours a week writing for high-tech companies and then go fish, ski, hike, act, volunteer, and settle into coffee shops. It was nice, but it wasn't satisfying. And then one day, I hit a wall. I didn't want to do it any more. I sold almost everything I owned, rented out my house, and moved to Sri Lanka to help with the tsunami recovery.

Now, five years later, I'm at a crossroads again. I spent five incredible years doing international development work -- the last three in eastern and southern Africa. It was exhilarating, enriching, rewarding, and incredibly frustrating at times. I'm very thankful for those years, and now I'm ready for something new.

The question is, what? For awhile I didn't have an answer to that question. But now it's emerging (yikes!): I want to act, travel, and write. I want to share stories, mine and others, that touch a chord in people and make them look at the world around them a little differently. I'm scared to take this on. Aren't enough people already doing this? Is there really anything new to be said? Am I creative enough to really succeed? Isn't helping to balance out the world's unfair distribution of resources a more important and necessary goal? Shouldn't I already be sharing more of my own wealth to help effect this change?

I don't have clear answers to these questions. I have realized that not all people have this same desire to live an engaged, passionate life -- and not in a bad way. Different things make different personalities tick. For me though, I now know that my work needs to be play. The next step is to really take the plunge. I'm not quite there yet, but I am inching closer and closer to the edge.

Sticking It to the Cancer Sticks

 

Yesterday I was surfing the web and came across a site that gave me the clearest understanding of some of the crazy things I do in relationships. I was so thankful for that wisdom shared so freely that I committed to writing a post today about how I finally stopped smoking after 20 years.

I started smoking with two of my best friends my senior year of high school. We would buy a pack of clove cigarettes, go to the local park, find a hidden patch of trees, and light 'em up. I remember sucking in the sweet woody smoke and licking the glaze of sugar the cigarettes left on my lips. It's funny to think that smoking was considered a taboo for 17-year-olds in our suburban Californian town. But it was.

Smoking with T. and K. made me feel sexy and daring. Somehow it gave us a cheeky confidence and sense of mystique. I continued smoking cloves from time to time in college and then graduated to the real cancer sticks my junior year abroad in France. I'll admit to drinking cappucinos in Lyon cafés with a scarf around my neck and even doing the French inhale (I did draw the line at a beret). Another exchange student there was incredible at it, slowly letting wisps of smokes swirl up in lazy loops from her hinged jaw into her nose.

A few years after college, my love affair with smoking ended, but I kept at it. I would quit from time to time -- once for six months, once for over a year -- tired of the morning hack and my nasty-smelling hair and clothes. Then I'd go to a party, and the fiery glow of a friend's cigarette and its trail of smoke would lure me back for just one puff. I was convinced I'd been a non-smoker for long enough that just a few puffs or even a few whole cigarettes would be fine. I always ended up buying a pack the next day.

Last year, I had quit again but still sneaked a cigarette or two from time to time. Then the relationship I was in went up in flames. I drove immediately to the gas station down the road for a pack and proceded to smoke (and drink) my way through my distress.

A couple of months later, I ran into this really great guy I knew in Nairobi -- a charming Italian who smoked like a banshee. When I saw him, he pulled me into a big hug and said "Debbie, Debbie, you won't believe it. We're having a baby, and I quit smoking!"

He told me he had used a book called Allen Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I got myself a copy and quit the day I finished it, the morning after my ex left the country. What is so incredible about the book is how Carr takes you through a logical progression of reason showing how smoking doesn't offer a single benefit, including the one all of us smokers think it does: a way to handle stress. He explained how smoking a cigarette might lower my stress for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, but then the nicotine addiction would immediately kick back in and toss me into a stressful cycle of waiting for my next hit.

I was never a chain smoker, but this logic made sense to me. I had plenty of memories of dying for a cigarette -- and memories of leaving conversations midstream to go have one. I needed to lower the stess in my life, and I wanted to quit smoking. Carr's arguments finally flipped a switch in my brain showing me that I could achieve both immediately. He also made it very clear that if I ever decide to take a single puff again I'm climbing back onto a hamster wheel and will start running like a maniac for my next pellet.

I've now been a non-smoker for exactly 11 months today, thanks to a lovely Italian and one hell of a good argument made by Carr.

You Know You're Tired When ...

Sometimes when I watch sappy commercials, I cry. This usually happens when I've exhausted myself. My mind and body are so tired that any emotional pull brings me immediately to tears.

The last four weeks I've been resting. I quit my job in Kenya, moved to France, and curled up in my rented furnished apartment. I've gone out with new friends a few times, and an old college friend came through one weekend, leading to a whirlwind trip to Bilboa. But overall, for hours each day, I've been resting. The first two weeks I napped seriously just about every day. Sixty to 90 minutes to two hours flat out. Dead to the world. And then a full eight hours of sleep each night.

The third week I still napped some days, but my energy started to return. This past week I haven't napped at all and have started to wonder if it's time to get off my duff. Get out there and surf. Make more new friends. Spend more time outside taking pictures. Write more. Do more. Make the most of this "non-working" break. And then I decide, no, I'm happy still resting. I've been torn though between society's and my own calls for achievement and activity and my inner voice guiding me toward rest, creativity, quiet, and alone time.

Then today I came across the 21.5.800 challenge: 21 days of writing 800 words a day and doing yoga five times a week. Perfect! My body has been getting achy spending so much time inside and often prone. This challenge gives me the motivation I need to write, rest and move if I want (the challenge allows corpse pose for the yoga if preferred).

I signed up, was poking around the creator's Web site, and came across this: If you are fried, hate yoga, have several children under the age of three, just had a root canal, are exhausted, and/or are energetically behind the eight-ball in every way, PLEASE DO SAVASANA FOR THE 21 DAYS. I started crying immediately, and the tears keep coming. I had no idea I was still so tired. I have no children and now no job and yet energetically I am burnt to a crisp.

So thank you Bindu Wiles for coming up with this writing and resting challenge that also gives me the opportunity to build new community. And thank you for bringing me to the place I needed to find to validate my enormous need for rest right now.

A Change of Perspective

So the other day I was visiting a hospital that provides HIV services in Tanzania. Another group was visiting too, so the director took us around for a joint tour. After introductions, one of the other visitors asked us to all stand together for a picture and then jumped in front of us as we walked along taking a snap here, a snap there. I was thinking, "What in the hell does he want my photo for? A trip report? A collage at his office showing his team with the white blond?" And then I realized that this is probably exactly what so many of the East Africans think as I take a shot of them in a field or cooking a meal or sitting around talking. A good opportunity for me to take a look at my own reflection in the mirror.

Isoke

March 15, 2009 by whirlingmusings

So more than a year ago I learned about the town of Isoke in southern Sudan. I still don’t know where exactly it is, but it inspires me to this day. It all came out of some very confusing conversations of me asking about where we worked and hearing “it’s okay.” Okay, it’s okay, but where the hell are we doing this work? After many amusing minutes I realized this was the name of a town. It still inspires me today. “Isoke.” “It’s okay.” Wish there was a town called “Accept what is coming your way without resisting.” “Isoke.” Okay, the town already exists.